the finest treatment available.”
“Take off your clothes,” she says.
“ What?”
“You heard me. Strip. Now!”
“No.”
She leans over and slaps my face, hard. Then slaps it again, paying me back for slapping her at Chris Fowler’s house.
“I’m dead serious, Gideon.”
I remove my clothes but place them on my crotch.
“Toss them toward the couch,” she says.
I toss them.
She sits on the stool and points the gun at my crotch and says, Spread your legs wide apart.
I do.
“It’s humiliating, isn’t it,” she says. A statement, not a question.
I say, “Yes. It’s humiliating. You’ve made your point. But you’re a stripper. Making you strip isn’t far from what you do for a living.”
“Oh, really? Well, you’re a surgeon, right? Maybe I should force you to perform surgery on yourself at gunpoint.”
“What do you want from me?”
She sighs. “I bet when you walk in the hospital you have total power. The nurses probably pee their pants worrying what you might do, or say, and your bosses have to bend over backwards to make sure you’re happy.”
“If you’re planning to shoot me, can we skip the lecture?”
“Know what, Gideon?”
“What?”
“You don’t look so powerful right now. You know how you look?”
“Like a naked guy?”
“Like a very average middle-aged man with a very flaccid penis.”
She leans over me and flicks my dick.
“Ow!”
“I bet if a total stranger saw you like this, she wouldn’t be able to tell you’re a world-class surgeon. She’d probably guess you’re a janitor, a pest control guy, or a TV repairman.”
I’m lying on the floor on my back naked, my legs spread wide apart while an eighteen-year-old woman talks trash and stares at my genitals. The one thing that makes it almost bearable, we both know she has every right to do it. I close my eyes in deep humiliation and shame, and neither of us speaks for a full minute until I say, “How long do you expect me to lie here like this?”
“We’re almost done.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I haven’t robbed you yet.”
34
“You’re planning to rob me?” I say.
“No. I was just messing with you.”
Willow walks over to the couch, picks up my clothes, and tosses them back to me.
“You can get dressed now,” she says. “But don’t stand up till I say you can.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
While I put my clothes on, she says, “I actually did bring you something.”
“What, nunchucks? A bazooka?”
“A peace offering.”
She pulls a zip-lock plastic bag from her suitcase.
“Recognize this?” she says, holding it up.
“Looks like a garage door opener.”
She tosses it to me and says, “Think about it, Gideon.”
I do. It’s Chris Fowler’s garage door opener. The one I removed from the burgundy Escalade in his garage after breaking into his home. I must have left it in the rental car.
Perhaps I’m not suited to a life of crime.
“How’s this a peace offering?” I say.
“The police are seeking the hit man who killed Kathy Fowler. Your fingerprints are all over her garage door opener.”
It hits me like a ton of bricks.
“You could have framed me for murder,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
I think about it some more. “A few minutes ago you said you were dying, angry, and had nothing to lose. But you weren’t angry. If you were angry, there are a thousand ways you could have gotten this into the hands of the police.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want me to go to jail.”
“No.”
“Because you want me to help you.”
“It would be nice if you helped me. But I would’ve given this to you either way.”
“Because you know I didn’t kill Kathy.”
“And because I’m not a vindictive person.”
“Except you humiliated me just now.”
“Except for that. And that was for your benefit, not mine.”
“ My benefit?”
“You didn’t just humiliate me and Cameron that night, you scared the shit out of us. And I could tell it gave you a rush.”
“You and Cameron snort cocaine for a rush.”
“Yeah, but we never broke into anyone’s house or stole things.”
She catches my look and adds, “Until we met you, anyway.”
She sighs. “Look, I’m sure you do good things at the hospital. But you do some really shitty things in the real world.”
“You wanted me to see what it feels like to be on the receiving end.”
She nods.
“It worked. I felt humiliated and shamed.”
“Good.”
“But if I’m being completely honest, what you did to me won’t change my behavior. If you had done this a few weeks from now, I would’ve felt exhilarated instead of shamed. Assuming I thought you might kill me.”
“Why?”
“Like we said, I have issues. These kids I work on? They’re rag dolls that have to be brought back to life. I… have to bring them back to life. And if I manage to do it, the orderlies quickly wheel in another one. After a few months of that, a bomb goes off inside me. I have to find new ways to keep myself from going insane.”
“I think you’re overlooking the real problem here, Gideon.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re already insane.”
