please call both numbers and Doctor Michaels and I will both get back to you.”
Ricky disconnected the recording and dialed the first of the two emergency numbers. He knew the second number was for a second- or third-year psychiatric resident at the hospital. The residents covered for the established physicians during vacation times, providing an outlet where prescriptions superseded the talk that was the mainstay of the analytic treatment plan.
The first number, however, was an answering service.
“Hello,” a woman’s voice responded wearily. “This is Doctor Roth’s service.”
“I need to get the doctor a message,” Ricky said briskly.
“The doctor is on vacation. In an emergency, you should call Doctor Albert Michaels at-”
“I have that number,” Ricky interrupted, “but it’s not that sort of emergency and it’s not that sort of message.”
The woman paused, more surprised than confused. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know if I should call him during his vacation for just any message…”
“He will want to hear this,” Ricky said. It was difficult to conceal the coolness in his own voice.
“I don’t know,” the woman repeated. “We have a procedure.”
“Everyone has a procedure,” Ricky said bluntly. “Procedures exist to prevent contact. Not help it. People with small minds and vacant imaginations fill them with schedules and procedures. People of character know when to ignore protocol. Are you that sort of person, miss?”
The woman hesitated. “What’s the message?” she abruptly demanded.
“Tell Doctor Roth that Doctor Frederick Starks… you had better write this down because I want you to quote me precisely…”
“I am writing it down,” the woman said sharply.
“… That Doctor Starks received his letter, reviewed the complaint contained within, and wishes to inform him that there is not a single word of truth in any of it. It is a complete and total fantasy.”
“… Not a single word of truth… okay. Fantasy. Got that. You want me to call him with that message? He’s on vacation.”
“We’re all on vacation,” Ricky said, just as bluntly. “Some people just have more interesting holidays than others. This message will assuredly make his far more interesting. See that he gets it and gets it exactly the way I said it, or I’ll make absolutely damn sure that you’re looking for another job by Labor Day. Understand?”
“I understand,” the woman answered. She seemed undaunted by his threat. “But I told you: We have clear-cut and defined procedures. I don’t think this fits anything…”
“Try not to be quite so predictable,” Ricky said. “And that way you can save your job.”
Then he hung up the telephone. He leaned back in his seat. He couldn’t recall being that rude and demanding, not to mention threatening, in years. It, too, was against his nature. But then he recognized that he was likely to have to go against his nature in many ways over the next few days.
He returned his eyes to the cover letter from Dr. Roth and then read through the anonymous complaint a second time. Still inwardly battling with the outrage and indignation of the falsely accused, he tried to measure the impact of the letters and return to an answer to the question Why? He thought Rumplestiltskin clearly had in mind some specific effect, but what was it?
Some things came into focus, as he considered the question.
The complaint itself was far more subtle than one would first think, Ricky realized. The anonymous letter writer cried rape! but placed the time frame just distant enough to be beyond any legal statute of limitations. No real police detectives need be involved. Instead, it would trigger a cumbersome, ham-handed inquiry by the State Board of Medical Ethics. This would be slow, inefficient, and unlikely to get in the way of the game clock running. A complaint that involved the police would likely get an immediate response, and Rumplestiltskin clearly didn’t want the police involved in any fashion, other than utterly tangentially. And, by making the complaint provocative, yet anonymous, the letter writer maintained distance. No one from the Psychoanalytic Society would call to follow up. They would hand it over, just as they had apparently done, to a third agency, washing their hands as quickly as possible to avoid what might be a real stench.
Ricky read both letters over a third time, and saw an answer.
“He wants me alone,” he blurted out loud.
For a moment, Ricky leaned back, staring at the ceiling, as if the flat white above him reflected somehow with clarity. He spoke to no one, his voice seeming to echo a little in the office space, the sound almost hollow.
“He doesn’t want me to get help. He wants me to play him without even the slightest bit of assistance. And so, he took steps to make sure I couldn’t talk to anyone else in the profession.”
He almost smiled at the modestly diabolical nature of what Rumplestiltskin had done. He knew that Ricky would be internally buffeted by questions surrounding Zimmerman’s death. He knew Ricky was undoubtedly frightened by the invasion of his home and office in the hours that his back was turned in pursuit of Zimmerman’s truth. He knew that Ricky was unsettled and uncertain, probably a little panicky and in shock at the rapid-fire series of events that had taken place. Rumplestiltskin had anticipated all that, and then speculated what Ricky’s first move might be: seeking assistance. And where would Ricky have likely been willing to turn for help? He would have wanted to talk-not act-because that was the nature of his profession, and he would have turned to another analyst. A friend who could function as a sounding board. Someone who could hem and haw and listen to each detail and help Ricky sort through the wealth of things that had happened so rapidly.
But that wouldn’t happen now, Ricky realized.
The complaint with its allegations of rape, including the gratuitous and ugly last portrait of the final session, was sent to everyone in the hierarchy of the Psychoanalytic Society right as they all prepared to depart on their August vacations. There was no time to forcibly deny the charge, no ready forum in which to do so effectively. The nasty nature of the charge would race through the New York analytic world like gossip at some grand Hollywood opening. Ricky was a man with many colleagues and few real friends, this he knew. And these colleagues were unlikely to want to be tainted by contact with a doctor who had violated arguably the single greatest taboo of the profession. An allegation that he’d used his position as therapist and analyst for the basest and crudest sexual favors, and then turned his back on the psychological disaster he’d created, was the psychoanalytic equivalent of the plague, and he was instantly rendered into a modern Typhoid Mary. With this allegation hanging over his head, no one was likely to step forward to help Ricky, no matter how hard he pleaded, no matter how hard he denied the charge, until it was resolved. And that would take months.
There was another, secondary effect: It created a situation where people who thought they knew Ricky, now would wonder what they knew and how they knew it. It was a wondrous lie, he thought, because the mere fact that he denied it would make people in his profession think he was covering up.
I am all alone, Ricky thought. Isolated. Adrift.
Ricky inhaled sharply, as if the air in his office had grown cold. He realized that was what he wanted. Alone.
Again he looked at the two letters. In the fake complaint the anonymous writer had included the names of a Manhattan lawyer and a Boston therapist.
Ricky couldn’t help himself from shuddering. Those names were installed for me. That’s the route I’m supposed to travel.
He thought of the frightening darkness in his office the night before. All he had to do was follow the simple path and plug in what had been disconnected to shed light into the room. He suspected this was more or less the same. He just didn’t know where this particular path might be leading him.
He wasted the remainder of that day examining every detail of Rumplestiltskin’s first letter, trying to dissect the rhymed clue further, then taking the time to write precise notes about all that had happened to him, paying as much attention as he could to each word spoken, re-creating dialogue like a reporter readying a news story, seeking a perspective that eluded him easily. He found he had the most trouble remembering exactly what the woman Virgil had said, which was disconcerting. He had no difficulty recalling the
