my creature.’ He seemed to like that, so I told him I'd consulted his plea to set him a task, and that I had a quest in mind. Then I told him what it was. He listened carefully, then stared into my eyes to see if I really meant it. I stared straight back so he'd understand I did. Things got very quiet.
‘Well?’ I said to him as he was about to leave. ‘Think it over.’ ‘I'll meet you here Monday at the usual time,’ he said, ‘we'll discuss it then.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘if you show up on Monday that'll tell me you've agreed. Otherwise don't bother.’
The poor boy nodded solemnly and slipped out the door. I waited a few minutes, then phoned J and told him what I'd done.
Monday
Good session with R, our best in last three weeks. Less tension, more progress, I felt good when I left, thanked him for his help. ‘I know I'm a real bitch sometimes. Please forgive me for that.’
He smiled, nodded sweetly. ‘See you Wednesday,’ he said.
Felt nervous driving out to the F. Stopped at the house, smoked a joint to calm myself down. When I got there and spotted T's car in the lot, I felt like I do when I beat some hotshot player out on the court: Sweet Victory Mine!
T subdued. ‘I'm prepared to do what you ask,’ he said. I brought out a second joint, shared it with him. ‘A man as brave as you,’ I told him, ‘deserves the best sex anyone's ever had. Guess who's going to give it to you?’ ‘You've already given it to me many, many times.’ ‘And today once again. So lie back and let me show you. There're a thousand ways, T, ten-thousand things I dream about every night, dream of doing just with you.’
God! I believe I came six or eight times and he three or four. Poor boy!
Tuesday
Someone has sent me the newspaper from the day Belle was taken. No note, no return address, just the whole paper stuffed into an envelope. And of course today is the fifth anniversary of that awful day. Today she is eight years and two months old!
My first thought: it's A who did this. I called him, shrieked at him. He denied it. ‘Barb, how could you I do such a thing? For all our differences, I could never do something so mean.’ ‘You want to take away my boys!’ ‘Not take them, you'd still see them.’ ‘Boys that age should live with their mother.’ ‘I don't think you provide a healthy environment, Barb. We shouldn't be discussing this. Let the judge decide.’
I called W, told him about the newspaper. ‘Horrible,’ he said. ‘Beastly! Contemptible!’ ‘Who hates me so much they'd do such a thing?’ ‘They don't hate you, love,’ W said. ‘They envy you. They want to see you crawl through broken glass.’ ‘God, I have crawled! Don't they know? Don't they realize what it means to lose a child?’ ‘Well, love, whoever sent that wants to make you crawl some more. The only way you can win with a person like that is to act like nothing's happened and carry on with your life.’
Monday
Terrible session with R. Told him I'm fed up with his Freudian claptrap. ‘It's like we're going around in circles here and the real key to it all is hidden in the center.’
He said: ‘I think if you'd be fair and look at what we've accomplished, you'd see that the circles we're going around in are getting tighter and whatever is in the center is starting to come into view.’
It was so hot I went straight home from session. I wanted to swim and cool off. Found another envelope in the same handwriting. Again no note, nothing inside but ten one-hundred-dollar-bills. A thousand dollars! What's that supposed to mean? Blood money? Ransom money? One thing is clear: whoever's doing this has serious money to throw away. That's scary!
While in the pool, I decided to go and see J. Called T, cancelled our tryst, then drove out to The Elms. When I told J what happened and showed him both envelopes, he turned grave. ‘This is serious business,’ he said. ‘My advice is don't bring it to the cops, not yet. Stay calm until we see how this plays out.’
We discussed T and how that's going and how far we ought to go with it. I told him I care for T and don't want him to do anything riskier than necessary. I said, ‘Risk is risk, there's no way to minimize it in a situation like this.’ I told him maybe we're making a mistake. He said he's positive we aren't and he'll do everything in his power to protect everyone involved.
When I left, I realized this was one of the few times I've visited him that we didn't end up in the sack. Back at the house, I phoned him and asked how he knew about me and T. ‘It's not like it's an atomic secret,’ he said. ‘You have a very visible car. I'm sure plenty of people have spotted you driving along, and maybe a few decided to follow and see where you were going – out of innocent curiosity, of course.’ ‘You're a real bastard, Jack,’ I told him. ‘I didn't say I followed you,’ he said. ‘Then who did?’ ‘I don't know,’ he said, ‘but whoever it was went straight to the person most likely to spread a story like that.’ ‘Who're we talking about?’ I asked. ‘Smart cutie-pie like you should be able to figure that out pretty quick.’
Fascinating! I check my watch. It's nearly 8:00 a.m.. An hour has slipped by without my noticing. I scan through Barbara's notebook. Plenty more entries ahead. Time, I decide, to take a breakfast break. But before I do, I take a few minutes to try to fix dates to the more crucial of Barbara's entries by matching them up with the entries in Dad's agenda.
The difficult sessions she speaks of with R are, of course, her analytic sessions with Dad – Dr. Thomas Rubin, who, unlike the other characters in her journal, doesn't rate use of the first letter of his first name most likely because it's a name he and Tom Jessup share.
Correlating her references to difficult sessions with Dad's notations of similar difficulties and/or headaches, I'm able to date Barbara's entries to Friday, July 11; Monday, July 14; Friday, July 18; and the last session, the one in which she tells Dad she's fed up with his ‘Freudian claptrap’ corresponds to Dad's notation on Monday, July 28: ‘Very difficult session with F. Worried.’
From this I'm able to deduce that Barbara has received the envelope containing the newspaper on Tuesday, July 22, and the envelope containing the thousand dollars on Monday, July 28, the same day she made the claptrap remark and but a month from August 27, the day she and Tom Jessup were slain.
After seeing Pam off to the courthouse, I return to my room, too wound up with Flamingo to go to work. Impossible for me now to put the diary down, so I settle back onto my unmade bed and resume reading where I left off:
Monday
This morning R astonished me. ‘Consider me seduced,’ he said. ‘What?’ ‘Now that you have me in your clutches, tell me what you're going to do with me.’
Was the man mad? Did he want to get off on my fantasies? Fine, I decided, I'll give it to him all right, I'll give it to him in spades!
‘I want to suck your dick, Dr. R. I want to tie you to the bed and ride your face. I want to sit on your dick (I'm sure it's big, Dr. R!) and ride your huge, horsehung dick like I ride a horse. How's that, Dr. R? Do it for you yet?’
He sat there still, impassive, the cool all-knowing shrink, while I gushed all this out like a crazed harpy.
‘How ‘bout this, Dr. R? I want you to crawl over here, stick your head under my skirt, pull down my panties and bury your face in my muff. Then lick -me, lick-me, lick-me till I scream-scream-scream. Suck-me, suck-me, suck-me till I come-come-come all over you, till my juices coat your cheeks.’
The most amazing thing was that even when I yelled all this at him (and I didn't care whether there was anyone listening in his waiting room or not), I felt myself getting hot. Then I realized I was diddling myself, which kind of told me I really did want to do all those delightful things with him.
‘You've turned me into Blackjack,’ he said when I finally quieted down.
‘What kind of bullshit is that? I'm a sexual woman. I have erotic fantasies. That doesn't mean I've got an Oedipus complex. You asked me to fantasize, I did, and now, God, you pull that old Freudian crap!’
He looked stricken, but all I could think was how stupid this whole thing was.
'I've already got two lovers,’ I told him. ‘I get all I need from them. I don't need you in the mix. Or is it that you want to mix in? If you do, please tell me so I can figure out how I can accommodate you.’
That made him furious. ‘You're a very difficult patient. I want to help you, but you constantly reject my help.’
