Ah.
I cross my arms over my chest and lean against the doorframe. “And? I don’t have them.”
“I was wondering if I might climb out your window and use the fire escape to get into my office.” Her face contorts in a weird grimace, which I’m sure she’s trying to pass off as an endearing smile.
“Can’t you call Leslie, or the building manager? They must have a spare key.”
“That would take too long; I have to be in court in an hour, and my briefcase with my pass and all my notes is locked inside.”
“All right,” I say. “You can come in, on one condition.”
“What?”
“Say ‘please.’”
I watch the battle between pride and necessity take place on her face, until, finally, with a theatrical roll of her eyes, she mumbles, “Please.”
I tap my ear. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear that.”
Medusa looks me straight in the eye and, gosh, if she doesn’t have the most beautiful, big, angry eyes. “I said, please.”
I move aside and gesture to my office. “Come on in.”
And if witches, like vampires, require an invitation to walk into someone’s house, I’ve just screwed my chances of ever being at peace.
Not one to waste time, Medusa walks briskly across my office to reach the side window overlooking the fire escape. She pulls up the sash, and then pauses, staring at the open window. It takes me a moment to realize why, and I can’t help but chuckle.
“Wait here,” I tell her, walking over. “I’ll go.”
“There’s no need. I’m perfectly capable of going myself.”
I give her a pointed once-over, taking in her stilettos and impossibly tight pencil skirt. “In that skirt and those shoes? Be my guest, if you can climb out of the window, you can go.”
She steps next to the window across from me and awkwardly tries to raise a leg over the windowsill, failing. Medusa pauses to debate her alternatives. I can practically see the gears in her head turning. She can either raise her skirt above her thighs and go outside, I’m not complaining, or admit she’s wrong and let me do the job. To be honest, I’m not sure which alternative I’d prefer.
Finally, with a frustrated huff, she waves a hand at me. “Okay, you go.”
I remove my jacket, drop it on the patients’ couch, and climb out to the fire escape. A short walk across the black metal platform brings me to her office window. It’s closed.
“Your window’s locked,” I call back.
Medusa pokes her head out, surveying the situation. Then, after nibbling briefly at her pinky, she says. “That one is, but the one next to it is open.”
The “one next to it” is a good six feet from the edge of the fire escape.
“Are you crazy?” I demand. “You want me to climb outside the ramp?”
“No, I want to climb outside the ramp. Nobody asked you to intervene. If you have a pair of sweatpants I can borrow, I’ll do it myself. It’s barely a three-foot walk on the ledge.”
“Three stories above ground!” I protest.
She just looks at me. “Please?”
With a few angry yanks, I remove my shoes and socks and throw them onto the fire escape. If I have to play Spider-Man, leather Italian shoes are not the way to go.
Shaking my head all along, I climb over the railing. One leg first, then the other. As I swing the second leg over the bar, my trousers catch on a piece of protruding metal. I hear the distinctive noise of fabric tearing as my left foot is about to land on the wrong side of the railing. The sound distracts me. I slip, losing my grip on the railing, and begin to fall.
Thirteen
Vivian
I may not have much affection in my heart for Dr. Meddling, but I still shriek in horror as I watch him suddenly plummet off the edge of the fire escape toward certain death.
Luckily the doctor has good reflexes and is able to grab onto the railing’s metal bars at the last second thus avoiding a horrible end splattered on the curb below. Shrek ends up dangling from the bottom of this level of the fire escape like a worm on a hook. Not dead, but not too comfortable either.
“Are you okay?” I call.
“Do I look okay to you?”
It’s weirdly comforting that, even when facing a horrible death, he hasn’t lost the will to fight with me.
“Can you climb back up?” I ask hopefully.
“A hand would be nice. I’m a therapist, not a world champion in parkour!”
I push off the windowsill and stare at my pencil skirt. Well, I’m not climbing out wearing this. I pull down the rear zipper and shimmy out, then I remove my jacket, and kick off my shoes. Freed from my constrictive clothing, I climb easily through the window, grateful that my blouse is long enough to reach below my buttocks—barely.
I hurry to the other end of the fire escape, lean my torso out, and offer Shrink Shrek a hand. Lucas grabs it and, holding on to me, he’s able to climb up until our eyes are level again. Well, almost level, since Dr. Keller is a few inches taller than me.
Without another word, Shrek uses the handle of the moving fire stair above ours as a handgrip and climbs further until both his feet are on the railing. From this perching position, he turns around and carefully walks along the ledge toward my open window, regaling me a second peek of white boxer briefs underneath torn pants.
Another step, and he’s able to crawl inside my office through the open window.
A stingy gush of wind prompts me to rush back into Shrek’s office and get dressed. Before I leave, since I have no idea where Lucas keeps his keys, I use one of the blue-cloth psychology tomes covering the shelves of the sidewall to stop the door from locking behind me.
I step on the landing just as Lucas comes out of my office, keeping
