By Bettyann Moore
The shrink’s office
is pretty fancy: signed and numbered abstract prints on pearl-grey
watered silk wall treatments; highly-polished mahogany desk, étagère
and bookcases; Turkish carpet on hardwood floors; large, well-placed
sculptures, including a hand-carved set of jade miniature figurines –
endangered animal species – on the corner of the étagère.
I’ve seen fancier.
A handsome,
well-dressed receptionist ushers me into the room where Dr. Jeffrey
Young awaits. When he stands to shake my hand, I notice his expensive
pinky ring and manicured nails. I’m pretty sure there’s at least
one layer of clear polish on those nails. I can’t see his feet
behind the desk, but I’m willing to bet they’re clad in Moroccan
leather or, worse, alligator.
“Please have a seat,
Julie,” he says, waving vaguely in the direction of a corner in
which a leather couch and two chairs sit. He will, of course, analyze
my seating choice. “You don’t mind me calling you Julie, do you?”
I head for one of the chairs.
“It is my
name,” I say, settling into the soft leather. “And I’ll call
you Jeffrey.”
“As you wish,” he
says, taking the chair opposite me. As he crosses his legs at the
knees, I note the shoes: alligator-skin loafers.
I hate loafers.
“So,” he says,
getting right to it, “what brings you here today?”
“It’s a condition
of my parole,” I say, watching his reaction, which is to look down
and scribble something in the leather-clad notebook on his knee.
“Yes?” he prompts.
“Yes,” I say, not
giving an inch.
There’s an almost
imperceptible sigh. I hear it, though.
“Well, let’s start
there, then, shall we?” he says, looking up at me.
“Okay.”
“You’re on parole.”
“Yes.”
“I assume, therefore,
that you were found guilty of committing a crime.”
“Yes.” You can’t
get anything by Dr. Jeffrey Young. He’s sharp.
“And the crime was
...”
I smooth my skirt over
my thighs and cross my legs before answering. “I stole a pencil.”
Dr. Jeffrey Young is not an eyebrow raiser. If he were, he would
have.
“You stole a pencil
...”
“Yes,” I answer,
then give him a little more. “From a blind man.”
“And this blind man,”
he says, making another notation, “what was he doing with a
pencil?”
Whoa! Nice catch
there, doc, I think.
“He was selling it.
Them, actually. He had more than one. In a cup. On a street corner.
Two for 50 cents.”
“And you stole just
one?”
“Well, I took
one. But it was for that old lady.”
“Old lady?” Jeffrey
asks, cocking his head to one side.
“Yes, she was running
down the sidewalk yelling ‘1-2-S-H-H-H!’ over and over again.”
I let the shoe on my right foot drop to the floor, ease out of the
second and tuck my legs under myself, getting more comfortable.
“1-2-S-H-H? Why?”
“No, 1-2-S-H-H-H.
Three H’s. She was trying to remember them. It’s easy to forget
that third H.”
“But what were they
and why was she trying to remember them?”
“The license plate
number,” I say, “of the man who grabbed her purse and took off
with it.”
It’s almost like I
can see the little light go on over Jeffrey’s head.
“So you took the
pencil so you could write down the letters and numbers,” he says,
impressing me.
“Oh, no,” I say.
“So she could write them down. I try not to get involved in
other people’s lives. Besides, I already knew the car belonged to a
local librarian. Pretty obvious, when you think about it.”
“And this librarian,”
he asks, “you know him?”
“Oh, certainly,” I
say, adding, “intimately.”
Jeffrey scribbles
furiously on his pad. “Intimately, meaning ...”
“Yes, that,” I
answer. “In fact, I had been on my way to meet him at his house
when the woman came screaming down the street.”
“So you took the
pencil from the blind man and gave it to the woman to write down the
number. What then?”
“I hailed a cab. Say,
Jeffrey, do you think I could have a glass of water?” I say,
nodding to a pitcher and glasses in the corner.
“Certainly,
certainly,” he says, rising. He pours me a glass of water and when
he returns, I’m settling myself on the couch.
“Thank you so much.”
I take a demur sip.
“You’re welcome,”
he replies. He sits in the chair I recently vacated as it’s closer
to the couch. I sense that he’s a bit surprised, and perhaps a tad
uncomfortable, by its warmth. He crosses his legs again, running the
razor-sharp crease in his slacks between two fingers.
Razor-sharp creases
annoy me.
“And you took the cab
to the librarian’s house?” he takes up where I left off.
“Yes.”
“Was he there when
you got there?”
“Of course. We had a
‘date’.”
“And did you say
anything about the woman, the license plate?”
“Well, I tried, but
he just pooh-poohed it, poured us a drink, and then we went to the
bedroom.”
“I see.”
“Yes.”
Jeffrey writes some
more, frowning ever-so-slightly.
“But I was curious,”
I add. “So when he fell asleep, I did a little checking.”
“Checking how?”
“Aside from a few
nightlights here and there, the house was pretty dark, but I’d been
there before, so I got up and started opening things … drawers,
cabinets, closets. His wife keeps things very tidy.”
“His wife.”
“Yes, she was away
that night.”
The pen starts
scribbling again.
“Down the hall,” I
continue, “I opened an enormous closet, one of those kind where the
light goes on when you open it, like a refrigerator?”
“Yes?”
“And inside, besides
all the coats and shoes, are dozens, maybe hundreds, of purses.”
Jeffrey almost arches
an eyebrow.
“So, I slip inside,
but I have to keep the door ajar because the light goes out if you
shut it.” I stretch my legs out the length of the couch and lean up
on one elbow.
“What did you do
then?” Jeffrey prompts.
“Well, I opened the
first purse I came to and took out the wallet. The picture on the
driver’s license was of that old woman.”
“You must have had
quite a shock.”
“Not half the shock I
got when I looked in a bunch of others and saw that nothing had been
taken from them … at least it seemed that way to me. There were
keys, wallets, makeup, money, credit cards … if this guy was taking
purses, he wasn’t taking them for what was inside, you know?”
The doctor merely
nods.
“And since it was
obviously his wife’s closet – all the coats and shoes were hers –
she had to be in on it, too.
“The biggest shock,
though,” I continued, “was when his wife came home.”
“What did you do
then?”
“What could I do?”
I said, swinging my feet to the floor. “I closed the door and
pushed my way to the back of the closet to hide. And I waited.”
“Waited?”
“Yes. Obviously, I
needed to get out of there … I was pretty creeped out by what I’d
learned about this guy, but I had to hope that he would at least take
care of the clothes, to save his own skin.”
“The clothes.”
“Yes, my clothes.
They were all over the bedroom. I was naked, after all.”
“I see.” Jeffrey
uncrossed his legs and recrossed them again.
“But I guess he
didn’t hide them fast enough or something because they had a
terrible big row. Seemed to go on for hours. I was freezing, so I
grabbed the first coat I could feel, which turned out to be a lovely
mink. It felt amazing against my skin.”
“How long did you
wait?”
“Hours, I think,
until the fighting stopped and they fell asleep or something. When
all was quiet, I groped around for some shoes, but all I could find
were CFM pumps.”
I could tell that
Jeffrey didn’t want to ask, but he couldn’t resist.
“CFM pumps?”
“Come Fuck Me pumps,”
I said, grinning across at him. “You know, seriously sexy shoes.
That’s all the woman had in there, but it was better than going
barefoot. I’d be hoofing it, after all. No car.”
“So, at this point
you had on nothing but a fur coat and the, uh, shoes.”
“Yes, though for some
reason I also grabbed the first purse I’d found, the old lady’s
purse.” I didn’t say “the old bag’s bag,” but I thought it.
I doubt Jeffrey did.
“Then you left.”
“Yes, then I left. I
opened and shut the door as quietly as I could and sneaked down the
stairs and out the front door.”
“How were you feeling
at this point?”
Oh geez, I
thought, analysis time.
“Seriously, Jeffrey,
at this point I was so pissed off I could barely see straight. The
nerve of that guy! I had a good mind to march back into that bedroom
and throw a hissy fit right in front of his wife. It had not been a
good day.”
Sometimes, I was a
master at understatement.
“So you walked ... in
what I surmise are not the most comfortable shoes.” Jeffrey wasn’t
bad at understatement himself.
“My dogs were killing
me before I’d gone a block!” I said. “And my apartment was a
good mile, mile and a half away.”
“Surely you didn’t
...”
“Surely not!” I
interrupted. “I got a ride.”
“A friend came by
...?”
“I wish! No, this
gorgeous red Porsche pulled up alongside me and this guy – I
thought I recognized him, but I didn’t – offered me a ride. I
could feel my feet swelling and even in a mink coat, it was none too
warm. So I did what anyone would.”
“You took a ride with
a complete stranger in the middle of the night.”
Jeffrey could be
positively droll sometimes.
“Presumably it all
turned out well,” he said, “you’re here now, after all.”
“Yes and no,” I
replied. “Yes, I’m here, but as for turning out well … better
for me than for him, I can say that at least.”
Jeffrey had long ago
dropped any pretense of making notes in his little leather book.
“How so?” he asked,
both feet on the floor at this point.
I threw back my hair
and slid down the couch, assuming the typical “therapy position,”
ankles crossed, hands folded on my stomach.
“The jerk must have
thought I was a hooker or something in that get-up I was wearing. He
started saying all sorts of crass things and, before I knew it, we
were parked in a dark alley somewhere and he was groping me.”
“You must have been
extremely frightened.”
“Hell no, I was still
mad! Madder! I hauled off and belted him right in the nose!”
“Then you ran away in
the, uh, shoes?”
“Not right away,” I
said quietly. “He was just a little guy and his nose was gushing
blood all over the white upholstery. He was leaning over, holding his
hands over his face and I, well, I gave him a karate chop right in
the back of the neck. I felt like Bruce Lee or something.”
“And then you ran?”
“No … not yet. I
must have hit him in just the right spot and he sort of went limp.”
“He lost
consciousness?”
“Yes.”
“So you stayed to
help him?”
“Not exactly … in
fact just the opposite.” I admitted. “He had this car, see, and
my feet hurt so bad! So I went around to his side and pulled him out
and rolled him away from the car … so he wouldn’t get hurt when I
drove away.”
“Julie, you’re
telling me that you knocked a man out, dragged him from his seat and
then stole his car?”
“Sort of. See, when I
was dragging him away from the car, his shirt rode up and his back
was showing. It gave me this idea.”
“Which was?”
“He had some sort of
presentation case in the back seat (if you call that a seat, it’s
so tiny) and there was one of those big, indelible markers in it. I
was worried that he’d wake up, so I popped the trunk and found a
couple of those bungee things.”
“You tied him up?”
“Just his hands.”
Jeffrey was too
professional to roll his eyes, but I could feel him doing it anyway.
“Then what?”
“Then I wrote a
little something on his back. I figured a whole lot of people would
see it before he did. His wife, I hoped.” I couldn’t help but
laugh at the memory. Before Jeffrey could ask, I said, “I wrote:
‘I am an evil asshole who thinks he can get away with rape’.”
“Attempted
rape perhaps ...”
“Perhaps, my ass,”
I cried, sitting up. “The only reason he didn’t succeed was
because I was bigger than him and mad. Besides,” I added, lying
back down, “he was a small guy – ‘attempted’ wouldn’t have
fit.”
I definitely heard
Jeffrey sigh.
“So you took the car,
drove home and that was that.”
“I would have been,”
I said, “except I remembered that Felix was out of food.”
“Felix?”
“My cat. Trust me,
one doesn’t want to let Felix go too long without food and he was
plumb out. There’s a convenience store a few blocks from my
apartment, so I thought I’d pull around behind the place, duck in
and get some kibbles and just leave the car where it was. What could
go wrong?”
“Indeed, what could.”
“First of all, there
was this crazy old guy buying lottery tickets. He had ‘lucky
numbers’ for every single ticket he bought … he couldn’t just
let the machine pick for him. Naturally, there was only one checker.”
“Naturally.”
“I have to admit, I
thought about just grabbing a can of 9 Lives and shoving it into the
old lady’s purse, but I didn’t need that kind of hassle in my
life.”
“You still had the
old lady’s purse?”
“Of course! Mine was
back at the librarian’s house with all my clothes. When I looked in
her wallet before, I saw she had a few dollars in there – enough
for cat food anyway.”
“So, you bought the
food ...”
“Well, I was going
to. The old man finally had his last lottery ticket and I stepped up
to the counter, reached into the purse and pulled out … a gun.”
“What??”
“I didn’t know it
was a gun! I just pulled out the first thing I felt and it was this
cute little pistol … you know, an old lady’s gun. It was pink,
for cripessake!”
“They still shoot.”
Jeffrey’s good at stating the obvious.
“The clerk must have
thought the same thing,” I said. “He freaked and threw his hands
up in the air and the old guy? He dove for the floor. I figured he’d
encountered that sort of thing before.”
“You explained to
them ...”
“I tried, really I
did! But the clerk kept shouting ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,
take the money!’ and the old guy just kept his head covered with
his hands. Like that would stop a bullet!”
Jeffrey had gotten up
at that point and was pacing.
“The little weasel
clerk must have hit a panic button,” I went on, “because pretty
soon I could hear sirens. I thought it would be a good idea to get
out of there, so I made a run for it out the back.”
“In those shoes?”
“That’s just the
thing, Jeffrey! I couldn’t very well run in those shoes, the cops
would be looking for someone in a mink coat, and there’s no way I
was going to take that car again, so I did what I had to.”
“You didn’t.”
“I had to! I stripped
off that coat and those shoes, and left the whole mess in the alley;
I didn’t even take the cat food. And I ran.”
“Naked.”
“As a jay bird,
though I’ve never understood that saying. What’s so naked about a
jay bird anyway?”
“I ...”
“Doesn’t matter,”
I said, waving him off. “I was just blocks from home, the streets
were deserted, so I took my chances.”
Jeffrey stopped pacing
and sank into the chair behind his big desk.
“I’m afraid to
ask,” he said. “You made it without incident?”
“Almost.”
Poor Jeffrey actually
did a face-desk. I almost felt like getting up and patting him on the
back.
“It was that
pervert’s own fault!” I cried. “He’d still be alive if he
wasn’t such a sicko.”
Jeffrey raised his
head. “You killed someone?”
“Only indirectly.”
Down went his head
again.
“Everyone in the
neighborhood knew about him,” I went on. “He liked to peek in
windows late at night. Most people just kept their shades pulled. It
just happened that he was peeking into Mrs. Shaunnesy’s place on
the first floor … I think Mrs. Shaunnesy was soft on him. She
always kept one shade up a bit. I don’t think he actually ever saw
anything … until he saw me, that is. I think the shock killed him.”
Jeffrey was quiet for a
long time.
“Jeffrey?” I said,
standing. “Doctor?”
“Go on,” came the
muffled reply.
“Oh, I’m done,” I
said. “I found my key – good thing I always hide one outside
– opened the door
on the apartment that Felix had completely torn up, took a shower and
went to bed. And here I am.”
“Because you stole a
pencil.”
“Yes.”
Jeffrey raised his head
and sat back against his chair. For the first time, he looked at his
watch.
“Julie, we’ve gone
way beyond our 50 minutes. Let’s go back over this from the
beginning next time, shall we?”
“Next time?”
“Why, yes! There are
several issues I can help you work on. I’m sure that in six, maybe
nine months we can have a handle on most of them ...”
“That’s crazy,
Jeffrey!” I said, then giggled at the words. “I only have to see
a shrink once as a condition of my parole, but it was very
nice to meet you.” I reached across the desk and shook his hand,
though it was pretty obvious he didn’t want to see me go. I think
he had a crush on me. Very unprofessional, if you ask me.
On my way out through
the receptionist’s office I heard him tell her to cancel his next
appointment. I gave her a little wave, then stuck my hand in my coat
pocket; the miniature jade figurine felt cool against my fingers. It
was time for lunch; I was starving!
.
