Second Honeymoon

Chapter 4

IF I’VE SAID it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Things aren’t always as they appear.

Take the room I was sitting in, for instance. To look at the elegant furniture, plush Persian rugs, and gilt-framed artwork adorning the walls, you would have thought I’d just walked into some designer show house out in the burbs.

Definitely not some guy’s office on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Then there was the guy sitting across from me.

If he had been any more laid-back his chair would have tipped over. He was wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and a pair of brown Teva sandals. In a million years you’d never have guessed he was a shrink.

Up until a week ago, I seemed pretty laid-back, too. You’d never have known that I was on the verge of trashing a somewhat promising eleven-year career at the FBI. I was hiding it well. At least that’s what I thought.

But my boss, Frank Walsh, thought otherwise. Of course, that’s putting it mildly. Frank basically had me in a verbal headlock, screaming at me in his raspy, two-pack-a-day voice until I cried uncle. You have to see a shrink, John.

So that’s why I agreed to meet with the very relaxed Dr. Adam Kline in his office disguised as a living room. He specialized in treating people suffering from “deep emotional stress due to personal loss or trauma.”

People like me, John O’Hara.

All I knew for sure was that if this guy didn’t ultimately give me a clean bill of mental health, I would be toast at the Bureau. Kaput. Sacked. The sayonara special.

But that wasn’t really the problem.

The problem was, I didn’t give a shit.

“So, you’re Dr. Grief, huh?” I said, settling into an armchair that clearly was supposed to make me forget that I was actually “on the couch.”

Dr. Kline nodded with a slight smile, as if he expected nothing less than my cracking wise right from the get-go. “And from what I hear, you’re Agent Time Bomb,” he shot back. “Shall we get started?”