The Ex

room.

Immediately she saw the iron grill bent wide away from the window.

The crate directly beneath the window.

She wheeled insanely in a wide circle, grunting and swinging the pickax like a baseball bat with all her might until it contacted a wooden support beam and stuck, its long wooden handle leaping from her grasp.

She was alone.

A hand touched her shoulder. She jumped and spun around.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” Darlene said.

Deirdre was amazed and outraged. “You followed me!”

“Of course I did. Because I’m worried about you. You’ve been acting more and more strangely, and now this. Were you chasing someone?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Of course not. I just got here.”

“I’m not chasing anyone. I came in here because…well, it was an impulse. I like basements.”

“That’s absurd, Deirdre.”

“How would you know?”

“Anyone would say there was something seriously wrong with a person who suddenly entered an apartment building basement on impulse and began beating at things with…what is that thing?”

“I don’t know. A tool. Some kind of pick. When I saw it, I liked it. So I took it.”

Darlene glanced around in the dim light. “We can talk about this later. Let’s get out of here now!”

Deirdre humored her and trailed along behind, but she was still furious.

With Molly and with Darlene.

36

After the terror of her encounter in the apartment building basement, Molly had been in no condition to resist David’s insistence that she see Dr. Mindle.

She sat now in his spacious office on Lexington near Thirty-eighth Street. It was a restful room with green carpet and drapes, dark woods and black leather furniture, no noise and no sharp corners. All colors seemed to be in the same spectrum. Nothing in the decor jarred.

According to the lobby directory, there were several psychoanalysts in the building. Maybe it was a co-op and they owned it. Even the elevator had provided a relaxing interlude, plush carpet, soft music, no mirrors to reflect anyone’s interior horror. An “up” experience and a prelude to therapy.

Molly was seated in a comfortable chair at an angle to Dr. Herbert Mindle’s desk. He was much as she’d imagined from David’s brief description, middle-aged, balding. But unlike her imaginary Dr. Mindle, he had a deep tan and an athletic build beneath his well-cut suit. The tan reminded her of those acquired at tanning salons then augmented by shopping and drinking expeditions during Caribbean cruises.

He leaned back in his padded desk chair and smiled reassuringly at her. It was the sort of smile shaped by practice at a mirror.

Molly smiled back at him, but only slightly. There was a faint scent of lemon mingled with something less acrid-Dr. Mindle’s shaving lotion or cologne-in the room, and she noticed now that from time to time the traffic out on Lexington was barely audible.

He said nothing, so she said, “It was my husband’s idea for me to come here.” Great! she thought. She’d sounded like some sort of codependent, Babsie Doll wimp.

“I know,” Dr. Mindle said in his easy, conversational tone. “He’s the one who called and made the appointment. He said you finally agreed to talk to me as a favor to him.” He made a steeple with his fingers. Molly was surprised that a real psychiatrist would actually do that. “Despite what’s been happening,” Dr. Mindle said, “and your ordeal in the apartment basement yesterday, you told him again that you didn’t need a shrink.”

Molly stared at him. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty for insulting your profession?”

Dr. Mindle smiled tolerantly. “No. It happens all the time. I’m used to it. Besides, maybe you really don’t need a shrink.”

Molly drummed her fingertips silently on the padded chair arm. “David said you and he worked out at the same gym.”

“That’s right, we do.”

“Friends? Weightlifting buddies?”

“You could say that.” Dr. Mindle’s smile changed to one of amused understanding. “I’m charging you for this visit, Mrs. Jones.”

Molly let herself relax and settle back in the chair. “Good. I feel better now.”

“That’s the idea, Molly, making you feel better. I can’t solve your problem in a short time. That is, if I can solve it at all.” Another soothing smile. “If you have a problem.”

“David thinks I do.”

“Well, he might be right.”

“He told you everything?”

“Yes.”

“Then he told you more than he told me.”

Without changing expression, Dr. Mindle stood up and walked out from behind his desk. He went to the window and faced the view of office buildings and searing blue sky. His voice was so soft she had to strain to understand his words. A stratagem, no doubt.

“This city, Molly, is a monster. It doesn’t eat people alive all at once, but it eats them. Some of them from the inside.”

Molly quietly watched him, a classic, inverted-triangle male figure silhouetted against the light. Pigeons cooed softly on a nearby ledge. Traffic hummed.

“You agreed to come here to see me,” Dr. Mindle continued, “so it must be that you admit to yourself at least the possibility that none of this is true. That no one is stealing your clothes. That no one tried to kill you.” His padded Armani shoulders rose in a subtle shrug. “Just the possibility, mind you.”

Molly felt anger rise in her. She held up her hands, scraped and blistered from frantically bending and twisting the iron grill over the storage room window. “Exhibit A, as they say in court.”

He turned around to face her. His expression was mild, composed. He barely glanced at her hands; the mind was his province. “We’re not in court, Molly. But if we were, the prosecution would say that you acted out and deliberately splintered that storage room door then injured yourself escaping from someone who thought you were a prowler. That apartment building isn’t in a crime-free neighborhood. Nowhere in New York is crime-free.”

“But suppose Deirdre was really there. And trying to kill me.”

Dr. Mindle faced the window again, slipping his hands into the pockets of his suit’s pleated slacks. “What would be her motive?”

“What if she’s trying to steal my life?” Molly said. “To take my place with my husband and son? To become me?”

“Then I’d say she should be here and not you. But you’re the one whose husband is concerned with your actions lately. And they’ve disturbed him enough to talk you into coming here.”

“Well, don’t we usually put away the people who disturb us, rather than the people who are disturbed?”

“Sometimes,” Dr. Mindle said. “Though not nearly as often as we used to, I assure you. And it seems to be you and no one else who sees yourself as a candidate for confinement. I see before me a badly frightened young woman, but not one who’s necessarily mentally ill. Fear can exist in perfectly normal people and still have no basis in reality. Sometimes when we remove the fear, reality again becomes clear.”

Molly sighed and stood up. Slick word games she didn’t need. “You’re trying to bullshit me, Doctor.”

He turned toward her and smiled. “That’s my job, bull-shitting you. It’s also my job to be honest with you. It’s a balancing act. And you have to be honest with me at least some of the time. We might get somewhere that way.”