“Do you consider yourself one of the irretrievably lost?”
“I must be, if I’m not interested in salvation.”
“Then what is your interest? Your reason for coming to me? You must have one, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I’m interested in relief. Simple relief. Because of what I might do if I don’t find it.”
“Then we have two questions. What do you need relief from? And what might you do if you don’t find relief? I suspect if we answer the first, we can take care of the second.”
Blank didn’t speak or change expression.
“Are drugs involved?” Rita asked. “If so, I can-”
“Not exactly drugs.”
Rita waited. She sensed Blank was on the edge, finally about to open up to her. She remained silent. Knowing when not to speak had been the hardest thing to learn in her profession. At this point there was nothing to say; Blank had to make up his own mind.
The muffled sounds of traffic below and far away filtered through the double-pane windows and heavy drapes. Faint noises from another world. They only made the office seem more quiet and isolated.
Like a confessional.
“I’m sure something is about to happen,” Blank said.
Rita waited.
“It always happens sooner or later. They find out. I always know that from the beginning, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s part of the reason. They learn about me. And then…”
Rita waited.
“There are lots of reasons why people confess, Dr. Rita.”
Rita waited.
“I was sixteen, living in Colorado. It was summer at a ski resort where I worked part-time. An older woman, about thirty, was a waitress at the lodge. She was a blonde and sexy. Bridget Olson was her name, but she wasn’t foreign or anything; she didn’t speak with a Swedish accent. I think she was from Iowa. She’d been divorced and drank too much, and she was always extra nice to me. The guy who ran the lodge made movies, but I didn’t know what kind then. Bridget did, though. She asked me one night…”
Blank talked on while Rita sat pretending to take notes, listening to the familiar cadence of her mysterious patient’s voice. There was no need to pay attention. The recorder was preserving it all on tape.
Not that it mattered.
She knew it was all lies.
I’ll find out, she thought confidently, letting him talk on and on, trying to shock and divert her. She idly watched her pencil move almost of its own accord and create obscure scrawling, like messages in another language. It was as if she were making note of David Blank’s earlier words that nibbled at truth and might be more prophetic than he imagined:
It always happens sooner or later. They find out. I always know that from the beginning, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s part of the reason…
They learn about me.
Rita knew that eventually she’d learn.
If David Blank-or whatever his name was-wanted an opponent to outwit in a game of his own making, he should have gone elsewhere.
He was smart; she was learning that about him. And he was confident.
What he needed to learn was that no matter how smart he was, there was somebody who could best him. In order to reach him, to understand him, his confidence in his superiority had to be shattered.
Rita’s job.
31
The apartment was quiet and dark, cool enough that the air conditioner wasn’t running. A faint breeze wended through the shadowed rooms from a window that was open a crack. The bedroom seemed, like the apartment and the city around it, to be asleep itself, or at least in a state unlike complete wakefulness. It was the kind of place where dreams visited the dreamer.
Mary Navarre woke up next to Donald, who continued to sleep peacefully beside her. She was sure she’d heard a sound in the kitchen.
She prodded Donald in the ribs and whispered his name urgently.
He mumbled something and raised his head to look at her.
“I’m sure I heard a noise out in the kitchen,” she said, hearing the fear in her voice.
“’Frigerator,” he said sleepily. “Icemaker or somethin’.”
“It was more like somebody moving around out there, trying to keep quiet. I thought I heard the refrigerator door open and close.”
He took in a deep breath, then sighed and propped himself up on his elbows. Donald was a big man, long- limbed but fleshy and with thinning blond hair. He was out of condition and not particularly strong to begin with, but his size was a comfort to her.
He cleared his throat and swallowed so he could be better understood. “So you want I should go out and talk to this hungry burglar?”
“You’re not taking this seriously enough. Maybe we should call nine-eleven.”
“Lotta trouble for nothing.”
“Maybe not.”
He wearily sat up in bed, then turned his back to her as he planted his feet on the floor. “I’ll go out and look. It’ll put your mind at ease, and besides, I could use a glass of water.”
She wondered if he was showing off, trying to impress her with his seeming nonchalance. “Okay, you go look while I call nine-eleven.”
“Don’t do that, Mary. Really. All it’ll be is a big pain in the ass. And next time, if something serious does happen and we call, they might not respond. I’m gonna go out there and find an ice cube on the floor, or something that fell over in a cabinet.”
“It didn’t sound like either of those things.”
He reached back and patted her knee. “Maybe not in your sleepy mind.”
“I was awake, Donald. I couldn’t sleep.” A lie. I’m afraid enough to lie to him.
He stood up and began plodding barefoot toward the bedroom door.
“Wait!” She was out of bed in a hurry, slipping on her robe. “I’ll go with you.”
While he waited, she went to a row of books on the windowsill and picked up one of the plaster pineapple bookends. It was painted plaster, but lead filled and plenty heavy enough if she had to use it.
Donald pried it from her rigid fingers. “I’ll take it.” He hefted the bookend in his right hand. “I wouldn’t want you to panic at a mouse and accidentally hit me with this thing.”
“We don’t have mice.”
Mary followed him from the bedroom. Why am I doing this? Why don’t I stay and call nine-eleven?
But it was all happening too fast, and she couldn’t let him go out there alone. Besides, he was probably right. She told herself he was probably right. Whatever she heard, or thought she heard, was probably nothing she needed to fear.
But she was afraid.
The kitchen was softly illuminated from the light on the stove. Mary stood just behind and to the side of Donald as he stepped through the doorway. She heard his intake of breath and saw his body stiffen, and she moved to the side so she could see around him.
A man was seated at the kitchen table. Before him was an opened milk carton, half a glass of milk, and a partly unwrapped loaf of bread. Mary realized she smelled something familiar and an instant later saw what it was- spicy lunch meat. The man was eating a pastrami sandwich. He was leaning forward over the table and had just
