The Venus Fix

Friday Fourteen days remaining
Twenty-One

I had gone to talk to Nina at my ten forty-five break only to find out she was attending a funeral. So it wasn’t until that afternoon that I caught her in her office, pouring herself a cup of hot, steaming ginger-and-honey tea, a concoction she made at home every day and brought with her in a big thermos. She offered me some, which I took, and then I sat down on her camel-colored leather couch and asked her who’d died.

“Didn’t I tell you yesterday?”

I shook my head.

“I must have been in denial. Nobody does denial better than a shrink.”

We laughed. It was true, even if it was a cliché.

Josh Cohen, a professor at Columbia Law School, who had been sick with Alzheimer’s for years, had passed away. For his friends and family, it had been like losing him twice: first when his mind faded away and he didn’t know them anymore, again when his body had given out. Nina was very close friends with Josh’s wife, Claire, who was also a therapist. She commented on the size of the crowd.

“All the important legal minds in the city, along with all the shrinks. There’s a joke in there somewhere but I can’t think of it now. Strange bedfellows, that’s it. Stacey O’Connell and I were sitting right behind a couple she’s been counseling for two years. I saw three lawyers I’ve worked with. Two of them saw me but went out of their way to avoid me. Kira Rushkoff wound up sitting behind Stella Dobson, and Stacey and I were worried Stella was going to notice.”

“Why?”

“Kira Rushkoff was the lawyer who won the privacy invasion lawsuit against Stella.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I forgot that. Do you know about Stella’s new book?”

“No, I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. How do you know about it?”

“Small city. Small world. She’s approached Blythe. She wants to interview her.”

Nina gave me a very confused look. “She wants to interview a sex therapist? Surely she would have called me. We’ve known each other for years.”

“No, she doesn’t want to interview her as a sex therapist. I don’t think she has any idea that Blythe works here. She wants to interview her about her Web-cam work. She probably doesn’t even know Blythe’s name. Online she’s called Psyche, after the Greek goddess.”

“I hope her past doesn’t wind up being a problem for her with patients one day,” Nina mused.

“It shouldn’t,” I said, thinking of the mask, certain I was right.