finances. A tax return is like a road map, from Social Security number to charitable donations. It displays all the well-traveled routes of one’s existence, without the history. Like a map, it shows someone how to get from here to there in another person’s life, where the turnpikes flow and where the back roads begin. All it lacks is color and description.
The missing computer frightened Ricky just as much. He had no idea what remained on the hard drive, but he knew it was something. He tried to recall the hours that his wife had spent on the machine before the disease robbed her even of the strength to type. How much of her pain, memories, insights, and electronic travels were there, he had no idea. He knew only that skilled computer technicians could recover all sorts of past journeys from computer memory chips. He assumed that Rumplestiltskin had the necessary ability to extract from the machine whatever was there that he decided he wanted.
Ricky slumped into his apartment. The sense of violation he felt was like being sliced with a heated razor blade. He looked about him, and understood that everything he thought was so safe and private about his life was vulnerable.
Nothing was secret.
If he were still a child, Ricky realized, he would have burst into tears at that very moment.
His dreams that night were filled with dark and violent images, of being cut by knives. In one dream, he saw himself trying to maneuver through a poorly lit room, knowing all the time that if he stumbled and fell he would fall through the blackness into some oblivion, but as he traversed the dreamscape, he was uncoordinated and clumsy, grasping at vaporous walls with drunken fingers, his journey seemingly helpless. He awakened into the pitch-darkness of his bedroom filled with that momentary panic as one staggers from unconscious to conscious, sweat staining his nightshirt, his breathing shallow and his throat hoarse, as if he’d been crying out for several hours in sustained despair. For a moment he was still unsure whether he’d left the nightmare behind, and it was not until he clicked on the bedside lamp and was able to look around the familiar space of his own room that his heart began to return to a normal pace. Ricky dropped his head back onto his pillow, desperate for rest, knowing none was readily available. He had no difficulty interpreting his dreams. They were as evil as his waking life was becoming.
The ad ran in the
He felt a momentary, illusory surge of success, with the ad running, as if encouraged that he had taken a step forward, and gained a temporary sense of determination. The overwhelming despair from the previous day’s discovery of the missing computer and stolen tax returns was, if not exactly forgotten, at least put aside. The ad gave Ricky the sensation that this day, at least, he wasn’t being a victim. He found himself focused, able to concentrate, his memory more acute and accurate. The day fled rapidly, as quickly as an ordinary day with patients would have, as Ricky plumbed his recollections and traveled steadily through his own interior landscape.
By the end of the morning, he’d created two separate working lists. Still confining himself to the ten-year period that started in 1975 and went to 1985, on the first list he identified some seventy- three people that he had seen in treatment. The courses of treatment had ranged from a high of seven years for one deeply troubled man, to a three-month burst for a woman experiencing marital difficulties. On average, most of his patients were in the three- to five-year range. A few less. The majority of his patients were traditional Freudian-based analyses, four to five times per week, utilizing the couch and all the various techniques of the profession. A few were not; they were face-to-face encounters, more simple talk sessions, where he had behaved less as an analyst and more as an ordinary therapist, complete with opinions, pronouncements, and advice, which are, for the most part, the things an analyst strives hardest to avoid. He realized that by the mid-1980s he had weaned most of this sort of patient out of his practice, and begun to confine himself solely to the in-depth experience of psychoanalysis.
There were also, he knew, a number of patients, perhaps two dozen over that ten-year period, who had started treatments and then interrupted them. The reasons for discontinuing therapies were complex: Some hadn’t the money or the necessary health insurance to cover his fees; others had been forced to relocate, because of job or school demands. A few had simply decided angrily that they weren’t being helped enough, or rapidly enough, or were too angry with the world and what it promised to deliver to them to continue. These people were rare, but existed.
They comprised his second list. This was a far more difficult list to come up with.
It was, he realized swiftly, on first appearance, the far more dangerous list. They were the people who might have transformed their rage into an obsession with Ricky, and then passed that obsession on.
He placed both lists on the desk in front of him, and thought he should start the process of tracking down the names. Once he had Rumplestiltskin’s reply, he thought, he could eliminate a number of people from each, then forge ahead.
All morning he had been expecting the telephone to ring, with a reply from his account executive. He was a little surprised not to have heard from the man, because in the past he’d always handled Ricky’s money with a boring diligence and dependability. He dialed the number again, once again reaching the secretary.
She seemed flustered when she heard his voice. “Oh, Doctor Starks, Mr. Williams was about to call you back. There’s been some confusion over your account,” she said.
Ricky’s stomach clenched. “Confusion?” he asked. “How can money be confused? People can be confused. Dogs can be confused. Money cannot.”
“I’m going to connect you with Mr. Williams,” the secretary replied. There was a momentary silence, and then the not exactly familiar, but not unrecognizable voice of his account executive came on the line. Ricky’s investments were all conservative, boring, mutual funds and bonds. Nothing hip-hop or aggressively modern, just modest and steady growth. Nor were they particularly substantial. Of all the professions in the medical world, psychoanalysts were among the most limited in what they could charge and the number of patients they could see. They were not like the radiologist who had three patients booked into different examining rooms for the same time slot, nor the anesthesiologist who went from assembly-line surgery to surgery. Analysts didn’t often become rich and Ricky was no exception to this rule. He owned his place on the Cape and his apartment and that was it. No Mercedes. No Piper twin engine. No forty-two-foot yawl named the
“Doctor Starks?” The executive came on the line brusque and speaking swiftly. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but we’re trying to figure out a problem here…”
Ricky’s stomach seemed empty, tight. “What sort of problem?”
“Well,” the executive said, “did you open up a personal trading account with one of the new online brokers? Because…”
“No, I haven’t. In fact, I hardly know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, that’s the confusing part. It appears that there’s been significant day-trading in your account.”
“What’s day-trading?” Ricky asked.
“It’s trading stocks rapidly, trying to stay ahead of market fluctuations.”
“Okay. I understand that. But I don’t do this.”
“Does someone else have access to your accounts? Perhaps your wife…”
“My wife passed away three years ago,” Ricky said coldly.
“Of course,” the broker answered quickly. “I remember. I apologize. But someone else, perhaps. Do you have children?”
