Now and Then

42.

A fter approximately eighteen months, 11:40 rolled around and Susan’s office door opened. Alderson stepped into the hall and turned and shook Susan’s hand, as he had when he’d come in.

“Susan,” he said. “Thank you so much. This has been one of the most remarkable hours I’ve ever spent.”

Susan shook his hand and nodded.

“Next Tuesday,” she said.

“Same time, same place,” Alderson said.

He turned for a moment and looked at me and smiled and turned back and went out the front door. Susan continued to stand in her office doorway. I went to the front window and watched him go down the steps and along the front walk and turn right and head back up Linnaean Street the way he had come.

We gathered in the spare room. Hawk and I on straight chairs. Vinnie on the couch with his iPod. Vinnie didn’t care if Alderson was unusual. If he needed to be shot, Vinnie would shoot him. Otherwise Vinnie liked listening to his iPod. Chollo sat beside Vinnie on the couch. It was hard to tell what interested Chollo, but he always seemed to pay attention. Susan rested her good-looking butt on the edge of the conference table.

“He’s a very unusual man,” Susan said.

“You have a moment to share your thoughts?” I said.

“I have all day,” Susan said. “I didn’t know how it would go, so I cleared my calendar after his visit.”

“Didn’t want no patients around, case we had to kill him,”

Hawk said.

“Yes,” Susan said.

Chollo smiled and nodded at her.

“Thoughtful,” he said. “For a gringette.”

“Is that a female gringo?” Susan said.

“It is what we always said in my village.”

“Village?” I said. “What village is that?”

“Bel Air,” Chollo said. “Bobby Horse and me, we live in Bel Air with Mr. Del Rio.”

“A hardscrabble life,” I said.

“Sí.”

We were quiet, everybody but Vinnie looking at Susan, waiting for her to tell us what she could. We knew she had allsorts of arcane shrink considerations hemming her in, so we didn’t know quite what to ask her.

“Did you give him your disclaimer?” I said. “About me?”

“Yes.”

“How did that sit with him?”

“He simply nodded,” Susan said.

“No comment?”

“None. Beyond the nod, it was as if I had not mentioned it,” she said. “He never referred to you in our conversation.”

“He gave me one smile, when he was leaving,” I said.

“Why do you suppose he did that?” Susan said.

“To show that he saw me there, and I didn’t matter,” I said. She nodded.

“What do you think?” I said.

“First,” she said, “I am quite sure he’s fraudulent.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him?” Hawk said.

“Oh, there’s a great deal wrong with him, I’m sure,” Susan said. “But he’s not here seeking help with it.”

“Shocking,” Chollo said.

“Can you tell why he’s here?”

“I would guess that he’s here to seduce me,” Susan said.

“Him too?” I said.

She smiled.

“I think,” she said, “that the seduction, in this instance, is the means, not the purpose.”

“The purpose being?”

“To get control of you,” she said.

I nodded.

“Is there any chance that his visit to you was legit?” I said. She shrugged.

“My business is pretty much like yours.” She glanced at the men in the room and smiled. “Minus the firepower. There are a lot of informed guesses made.”

“And your informed guess is that he’s not seeking therapy,”

I said.

“Correct.”

“So you may feel less constrained than you might otherwise feel to protect the privacy of the session.”

She smiled again.

“Correct,” she said. “To a point.”

“How will you know when you reach the point,” I said.

“I’ll know,” Susan said.

“So what he talk ’bout,” Hawk said.

“He was effusive,” Susan said, “when he came in. He’d heard so many wonderful things about me. He hadn’t expected anyone so attractive. He hoped he wouldn’t bore me.”

Through the front window I could see an inconsequential fl urry of snow drift past.

“I told him,” Susan said, “that people easily bored by others didn’t usually enter this profession, and perhaps he might tell me why he had come. He began by telling me about his father. There’s nothing unusual in that. Many people come and begin by telling me about their parents and assume I will see the problem and tell them what to do. It’s not very effective, but it’s common, and it’s often useful as kind of a warm-up, before the game starts.”

“Did you believe what he told you?”

“I don’t know if it was true or not,” she said. “He appeared to admire his father. And he feared he couldn’t live up to him.”

“Not an unheard-of problem,” I said.

“No, in fact,” Susan said, “it is so common that one is a little suspicious of it when it surfaces fully expressed, so to speak, ten minutes into your fi rst therapy session.”

“You think he made it up?”

“I have no idea. But he has certainly articulated it before.”

“You think he’s seen a shrink before?” I said.

“I would guess that he has,” Susan said. “He seems comfortable with it. He seemed to know how it worked. He’s not nervous. No uncomfortable jokes about the couch or all shrinks taking August off. He was very at ease, very articulate. And he had an agenda. He wasn’t uncertain. He knew where he wanted to go in the interview.”

“How did he present his seductive side?” I said.

Hawk looked at Chollo.

“You see how he ease in on that?” Hawk said.

“More subtle than the plumed serpent,” Chollo said.

“The plumed serpent live in Bel Air, too?” I said.

“Sí.”

“It was mostly attitude and body language,” Susan said.

“Most women recognize it. The appraising look. The eye contact. The implication of specially shared knowledge. Taking any opportunity to flatter my appearance. You often say you can tell if a woman is, ah, compliant.”

“I can.”

“Same thing,” Susan said.

“All men are compliant,” I said, “in your case. If they’re straight.”

“In fact,” Susan said, “that’s not always so. But it was so here.”

“Did he make a specifi c proposal.”

“No. But he made an appointment for next Tuesday and he acted as if he were in for the long haul.”

“The therapy or the seduction?” I said.

“Both,” she said. “One being the means to the other.”

“Levels within levels,” I said.

“Pretend therapy,” Susan said, “in order to pretend seduction, so that he can get control of you, so that he can prevent you from whatever exactly it is he wants to prevent you from doing.”

Chollo smiled.

“I am not sure, señorita, that the seduction part is pretend,” he said. “It would be deceitful, but I believe he would be very happy to carry it off while he was at it.”

“Why, Chollo,” Susan said. “How gallant.”

“I too am compliant,” Chollo said.

Susan smiled a wide smile.

“I knew that,” she said.