Silent Partner

11

Free follow-up visits. That brought back something I’d worked hard at forgetting.

Driving home, I wondered how many men Sharon had victimized, how long it had been going on. It was impossible now for me to imagine a man in her life without assuming a carnal link.

Trapp. The sheik. D.J. Rasmussen. Victims all?

I wondered especially about Rasmussen. Had he still been involved with her at the time of her death? It could explain why the loss had hit him so hard. Why he’d drunk himself stuporous, made a pilgrimage to her house.

Meeting another pilgrim: me.

How does someone like that become a therapist anyway? Don’t you people do any screening?

I hadn’t screened her out of my life, had long rationalized it by telling myself I’d been young and naïve, too green to know any better. Yet three days ago I’d been jacked up and ready to see her again. Ready to start… what?

The fact that I’d broken the date was small comfort. What would have happened had she phoned, put a catch in her voice, told me what a wonderful guy I was? Would I have been able to resist being needed? Spurned the opportunity to hear about her “problem,” maybe even solve it?

I didn’t have an honest answer. Which said plenty about my judgment. And my mental health.

I lapsed into the esteem-sapping self-doubts I’d thought resolved during my training therapy: What gave me the right to mold other people’s lives when I couldn’t get my own life straight? What made me an authority on other people’s kids when I’d never raised a child of my own?

Dr. Expert. Who the hell was I kidding?

I remembered the good-mother smile of my training therapist, Ada Small. Soft voice. Brooklyn accent. Soft eyes. Unconditional acceptance; even the tough messages sweetened by kindness…

… your strong need to always be in control, Alex. It’s not a totally bad thing, but at some point we will need to examine it…

Ada had taken me a long way; I’d been lucky to be assigned to her. Now we were colleagues, cross-referring, discussing patients; it had been a long time since I’d related to her as a patient. Could I ever go back to showing her my scars?

Sharon hadn’t been so lucky with her assignment. Paul Peter Kruse. Power junkie. Pornographer. Equal opportunity flogger. I could only imagine what training therapy with him had been like. Yet she’d stayed with him long after graduating, remained his assistant instead of getting her license.

Doing her dirty work in space he leased. It said as much about her as about him, and I had to wonder who’d called the shots in their relationship.

Exploiters. Victims.

But her last victim had been herself. Why?

I forced myself to stop thinking about it, pushed Robin’s face into my mind. No matter how things turned out, what we’d had once had been real.

The moment I got home I called San Luis Obispo.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Robin.”

“Alex? Mom said you called. I tried to reach you several times.”

“Just got in. Mom and I had a charming conversation.”

“Oh. Did she give you a hard time?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Main thing is, how’s she treating you?”

She laughed. “I can handle her.”

“You sure? You sound wiped out.”

“I am wiped out, but that has nothing to do with her. Aaron’s turned out to be a screamer- Terry’s up all night. I’ve been relieving her- never been so exhausted in my life.”

“Good. Maybe you’ll yearn for the good old days and come back.”

Silence.

“Anyway,” I said, “I just thought I’d call and see how you’re doing.”

“I’m hanging in. How are you doing, Alex?”

“Just dandy.”

“Really?”

“Would you believe semi-dandy?”

“What’s the matter, Alex?”

“Nothing.”

“You sound as if something’s weighing on you.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “It just hasn’t been a great week, so far.”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I know you’ve been patient-”

“No,” I said, “it has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh?” she said, sounding more hurt than relieved.

“Someone I knew back in school committed suicide.”

“How awful!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did you know this person well?”

That gave me pause. “No,” I said, “not really.”

“Still,” she said, “that kind of thing’s so upsetting to hear.”

“How about we change the subject.”

“Sure- did I say something wrong?”

“No, nothing. I just don’t feel like getting into it.”

“All right,” she said.

“Anyway, I’ll let you go now.”

“I’m not rushing anywhere.”

“Okay.”

But we found little more to talk about and when I hung up I felt empty. I filled the void with memories of Sharon.

That second autumn, we remained lovers, of sorts. When I managed to reach her she always said yes, always had sweet things to say, stimulating bits of academic knowledge to share. She whispered in my ear, rubbed my back, spread her legs for me with the ease of applying her lipstick, insisting I was her guy, the only man in her life. But reaching her was the challenge. She was seldom home, never left a clue to her whereabouts.

Not that I was knocking myself out trying to find her. The hospital owned me fifty hours a week and I’d taken on private patients at night, in order to save up the down payment on a house of my own. I kept busy solving the problems of others and ignoring my own.

A couple of times I dropped in on her unannounced, making the drive up Jalmia only to find the gray house locked, the carport empty. I gave up trying, went without seeing her for a couple of weeks. But late one Saturday night, stuck in the stop-and-go on Sunset after a wrenching evening with the parents of a mercilessly deformed newborn baby, I found myself wanting a shoulder to cry on. Like a homing pigeon I veered north to Hollywood Boulevard, turned off at Nichols Canyon. When I pulled up the driveway, the Alfa Romeo was sitting there.

The front door was unlocked. I walked in.

The living room was brightly lit but empty. I called her name. No answer. Repeated it. Nothing.

I checked her bedroom, half expecting to find her with another man. Half wanting to.

But she was in there, alone, sitting cross-legged on the bed, stark naked, eyes closed, as if meditating.

I’d entered her body so many times, but this was the first time I’d seen it unclothed. She was flawless, unbelievably rich. I restrained myself from touching her, whispered, “Sharon.”

She didn’t budge.

I wondered if she was engaging in some kind of self-hypnosis. I’d heard Kruse was a master hypnotist. Had he been giving her private lessons?

But she looked stricken rather than entranced- frowning, breathing rapidly and shallowly. Her hands began to tremble. I noticed something in the right one.

A small black-and-white snapshot, the old-fashioned type, with sawtooth edges.

I came closer and looked at it. Two little beautiful black-haired girls, about two or three years old. Identical twins with Shirley Temple curls, sitting side by side on a wooden garden bench, clear skies and dark, brooding granite mountains in the background. Picture-postcard mountains, perfect enough to be a photographer’s backdrop.

The twins looked solemn and posed. Too solemn for their age. They’d been dressed in identical cowgirl suits- chaps, fringes, rhinestones- and held identical ice cream cones. Carbon copies of each other except for one small detail: One girl clutched her cone in her right hand; the other, in her left.

Mirror-image twins.

Their features were set, hyper-mature.

Sharon’s features, times two.

I was their only little girl.

Surprise, surprise.

I looked up at her, touched her bare shoulder, expecting the usual heat. But she felt cold and dry, strangely inorganic.

I leaned down and kissed the back of her neck. She jumped, cried out as if bitten. Striking out with her fists, she fell back on the bed, legs wide-flung in a helpless caricature of sexual welcome, panting, staring up at me.

“Sharon…”

She was looking at me as if I were a monster. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

The snapshot fell to the floor. Picking it up, I saw something written on the back. A single sentence, in a strong hand.

S and S. Silent partners.

I turned the photo over, looked at the twins again.

“No!” she screamed as she sprang up and charged me. “No, no, no! Gimme, gimme! Mine, mine! Gimme!”

She clawed for the picture. Her fury was absolute, a hellish transformation. Stunned, I tossed it onto the bed.

She snatched it, clutched it to her chest, got up on all fours and crawled backward until she was up against the headboard. Her free hand struck out at the air between us, defining a no man’s land. Her hair was tangled, Medusa-wild. She got to her knees, swayed and shook, big breasts bobbling.

“Sharon, what’s the matter-”

“Go! Go!”

“Honey-”

“Go! Get out! Go! Go! Get out! Go!”

Sweat poured out of her, flowed down her body. Hot pink patches rose on the snow of her skin, as if she were burning from within.

“Sharon-”

She hissed at me, then whimpered and curled fetally, holding the snapshot to her heart. I watched it rise and fall with each labored breath. Took a step forward.

“No! Get out! Get out!”

The look in her eyes was murderous.

I backed out of the room, ran from the house, feeling dizzy, sick, sucker-punched.

Certain that whatever we had was over.

Not knowing if that was good or bad.