Gone

First-name basis with her lawyer. I wondered if Montez had been motivated by more than professional responsibility.

Stop, suspicious fellow. Focus on the patient.

This patient was leaning forward and smiling shyly, loose breasts cupping black jersey. I said, “What did Mr. Montez tell you about this evaluation?”

“That I should open myself up emotionally.” She poked at a corner of one eye. Dropped her hand and ran her finger along a black-denim knee.

“Open yourself up how?”

“You know, not hold back from you, just basically be myself. I’m…”

I waited.

She said, “I’m glad it’s you. You seem kind.” She curled one leg under the other.

I said, “Tell me how it happened, Michaela.”

“How what happened?”

“The phony abduction.”

She flinched. “You don’t want to know about my childhood or anything?”

“We may get into that later, but it’s best to start with the hoax itself. I’d like to hear what happened in your words.”

“My words. Boy.” Half smile. “No foreplay, huh?”

I smiled back. She unfolded her legs and a pair of high-heeled black Skechers alit on the carpet. She flexed one foot. Looked around the office. “I know I did wrong but I’m a good girl, Doctor. I really am.”

She crossed her arms over the Porn Star logo. “Where to start…I have to tell you, I feel so exposed.”

I pictured her rushing onto the road, naked, nearly causing an old man to drive his truck off a cliff. “I know it’s tough to think about what you did, Michaela, but it could be really helpful to get used to talking about it.”

“So you can understand me?”

“That,” I said, “but also at some point you might be required to allocate.”

“What’s that?”

“To tell the judge what you did.”

“Confession,” she said. “It’s a fancy word for confession?”

“I guess it is.”

“All these words they use.” She laughed softly. “At least I’m learning stuff.”

“Probably not the way you wanted to.”

“That’s for sure…lawyers, cops. I don’t even remember who I told what.”

“It’s pretty confusing,” I said.

“Totally, Doctor. I have a thing for that.”

“For what?”

“Confusion. Back in Phoenix- in high school- some people used to think I was an airhead. The brainiacs, you know? Truth is, I got confused a lot. Still do. Maybe it’s because I fell on my head when I was a little kid. Fell off a swing and passed out. After that I never really did too good in school.”

“Sounds like a bad fall.”

“I don’t remember much about it, Doctor, but they told me I was unconscious for half a day.”

“How old were you?”

“Maybe three. Four. I was swinging high, used to love to swing. Must’ve let go or something and went flying. I hit my head other times, too. I was always falling, tripping over myself. My legs grew so fast, when I was fifteen I went from five feet to five eight in six months.”

“You’re accident-prone.”

“My mom used to say I was an accident waiting to happen. I’d get her to buy me good jeans, and then I’d rip the knees and she’d get upset and promise never to buy me anything anymore.”

She touched her left temple. Caught some hair between her fingers and twisted. Pouted. That reminded me of someone. I watched her fidget and it finally came to me: young Brigitte Bardot.

Would she know who that was?

She said, “My head’s been spinning. Since the mess. It’s like someone else’s screenplay and I’m drifting through the scenes.”

“The legal system can be overwhelming.”

“I never thought I’d be in the system! I mean, I don’t even watch crime stuff on TV. My mom reads mysteries but I hate them.”

“What do you read?”

She’d turned aside, didn’t answer. I repeated the question.

“Oh, sorry, I spaced out. What do I read…Us magazine. People, Elle, you know.”

“How about we talk about what happened?”

“Sure, sure…it was just supposed to be…maybe Dylan and I took it too far but my acting teacher, her big thing is that the whole point of the training is to lose yourself and enter the scene, you really need to abandon the self, you know, the ego. Just give yourself up to the scene and flow.”

“That’s what you and Dylan were doing,” I said.

“I guess I started out thinking we were doing that and I guess…I really don’t know what happened. It’s so crazy, how did I get into this craziness?”

She slammed a fist into an open hand, shuddered, threw up her arms. Began crying softly. A vein throbbed in her neck, pumping through cover-up, accentuating a bruise.

I handed her a tissue. Her fingers lingered on my knuckles. She sniffled. “Thanks.”

I sat back down. “So you thought you were doing what Nora Dowd taught you.”

“You know Nora?”

“I’ve read the court documents.”

“Nora’s in the documents?”

“She’s mentioned. So you’re saying the false abduction was related to your training.”

“You keep calling it false,” she said.

“What would you like me to call it?”

“I don’t know…something else. The exercise. How about that? That’s really what it started out as.”

“An acting exercise.”

“Uh-huh.” She crossed her legs. “Nora never came out and told us to do an exercise but we thought- she was always pushing us to get into the core of our feelings. Dylan and I figured we’d…” She bit her lip. “It was never supposed to go that far.”

She touched her temple again. “I must’ve been whack. Dylan and I were just trying to be artistically authentic. Like when I tied him up and wrapped the rope around myself, I held it around my neck for a while to make sure it would leave marks.” She frowned, touched a bruise.

“I see it.”

“I knew it wouldn’t take long. To make a bruise. I bruise real easily. Maybe that’s why I don’t do pain very well.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a crybaby about pain so I stay away from it.” She touched a spot where the scoop neck of the T-shirt met skin. “Dylan feels nothing, I mean, he’s like stone. When I tied him up, he kept saying tighter, he wanted to feel it.”

“Pain?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Not his neck at first, just his legs and arms. But even that hurts when you go tight enough, right? But he kept telling me tighter, tighter. Finally I screamed at him, I’m doing it as tight as I can.” She gazed up at the ceiling. “He just laid there. Then he smiled and said maybe you should do my neck the same way.”

“Dylan has a death wish?”