The Bachman Books

'We are? If so, then we all want to help you.'

He was going to be a much tougher nut to strip than old Tom Denver had been. That was obvious. I called Don Grace up in my mind. Short, dapper little fuck. Bald on top, big muttonchop sideburns, as if to make up for it. He favored tweed coats with suede patches on the elbows. A pipe always stuffed with something that came from Copenhagen and smelled like cowshit. A man with a headful of sharp, prying instruments. A mind-fucker, a head- stud. That's what a shrink is for, my friends and neighbors; their job is to fuck the mentally disturbed and make them pregnant with sanity. It's a bull's job, and they go to school to learn how, and all their courses are variations on a theme: Slipping It to the Psychos for Fun and Profit, Mostly Profit. And if you find yourself someday lying on that great analyst's couch where so many have lain before you, I'd ask you to remember one thing: When you get sanity by stud, the child always looks like the father. And they have a very high suicide rate.

But they get you lonely, and ready to cry, they get you ready to toss it all over if they will just promise to go away for a while. What do we have? What do we really have? Minds like terrified fat men, begging the eyes that look up in the bus terminal or the restaurant and threaten to meet ours to look back down, uninterested. We lie awake and picture ourselves in white hats of varying shapes. There's no maidenhead too tough to withstand the seasoned dork of modern psychiatry. But maybe that was okay. Maybe now they would play my game, all these shysters and whores.

'Let us help you, Charlie,' Mr. Grace was saying.

'But by letting you help me, I would be helping you.' I said it as if the idea had just occurred to me. 'Don't want to do that.'

'Why, Charlie?'

'Mr. Grace?'

'Yes, Charlie?'

'The next time you ask me a question, I'm going to kill somebody down here. ' I could hear Mr. Grace suck wind, as if someone had just told him his son had been in a car crash. It was a very un-self-confident sound. It made me feel very good.

Everyone in the room was looking at me tightly. Ted Jones raised his head slowly, as if he had just awakened. I could see the familiar, hating darkness cloud his eyes. Anne Lasky's eyes were round and frightened. Sylvia Ragan's fingers were doing a slow and dreamy ballet as they rummaged in her purse for another cigarette. And Sandra Cross was looking at me gravely, gravely, as if I were a doctor, or a priest.

Mr. Grace began to speak.

'Watch it!' I said sharply. 'Before you say anything, be careful. You aren't playing your game any longer. Understand that. You're playing mine. Statements only. Be very careful. Can you be very careful?'

He didn't say anything about my game metaphor at all. That was when I began to believe I had him.

'Charlie . . . 'Was that almost a plea?

'Very good. Do you think you'll be able to keep your job after this, Mr. Grace?'

'Charlie, for God's sake . . . '

'Ever so much better. '

'Let them go, Charlie. Save yourself. Please.'

'You're talking too fast. Pretty soon a question will pop out, and that'll be the end for somebody.'

'Charlie . . . '

'How was your military obligation fulfilled?'

'Wh . . . ' Sudden whistling of breath as he cut that off.

'You almost killed somebody,' I said. 'Careful, Don. I can call you Don, can't I? Sure. Weigh those words, Don.'

I was reaching out for him.

I was going to break him.

In that second it seemed as if maybe I could break them all.

'I think I better sign off for the moment, Charlie.'

'If you go before I say you can, I'll shoot somebody. What you're going to do is sit there and answer my questions.'

The first sweaty desperation, as well concealed as underarm perspiration at the junior prom: 'I really mustn't, Charlie. I can't take the responsibility for-'

'Responsibility?' I screamed. 'My God, you've been taking the responsibility ever since they let you loose from college! Now you want to cop out the first time your bare ass is showing! But I'm in the driver's seat, and by God you'll pull the cart! Or I'll do just what I said. Do you dig it? Do you understand me?'

'I won't play a cheap parlor game with human lives for party favors, Charlie. '

'Congratulations to you,' I said. 'You just described modern psychiatry. That ought to be the textbook definition, Don. Now, let me tell you: you'll take a piss out the window if I tell you to. And God help you if I catch you in a lie. That will get somebody killed too. Ready to bare your soul, Don? Are you on your mark?'

He drew in his breath raggedly. He wanted to ask if I really meant it, but he was afraid I might answer with the gun instead of my mouth. He wanted to reach out quick and shut off the intercom, but he knew he would hear the echo of the shot in the empty building, rolling around in the corridor below him like a bowling ball up a long alley from hell.

'All right,' I said. I unbuttoned my shirt cuffs. Out on the lawn, the cops and Tom Denver and Mr. Johnson were