O'Farrell's Law (2 page)

He had failed before to complete fully, O'Farrell reassured himself. On several occasions, in fact: but not for a long time. It didn't matter: by itself it didn't matter at all.

“A bitch this time, eh?” Symmons suggested.

O'Farrell knew there was no remark, no apparent aside, that was insignificant during these sessions. He smiled and said, “Next time we'll set up side bets.” That sounded good enough, someone unworried by a minor setback.

“Let's try some words now.”

O'Farrell folded one hand casually over the other, crossing his legs as he did so, wanting to appear relaxed. It gave him the opportunity to feel for any wetness in his palms. No sweat at all, he decided, relieved.

“Mother,” set off Symmons, abruptly.

“Disaster.” Why this beginning? Symmons knew the story, but they hadn't talked about it for a long time.

“Violence.”

“Peace,” responded O'Farrell, at once. Why violence, of all words?

“Death.”

“Dishonor.” The trigger words were not supposed to be connected but there was a link here, surely?

“Water.”

“Boat.” Easier, thought O'Farrell.

“Money.”

“Debt.” Why the hell had he said that! He wasn't in debt—had never been in debt—but the answer could indicate he had financial difficulties.

“Country.”

“Patriot.” Which was sincerely how he felt about himself: the justification—no, the solid basis—for much of what he did.
All
of what he did, in fact.

“Dog.”

“Bone.” Nothing wrong that time.

“Fuck.”

“Obscenity.” Another change from normal: O'Farrell couldn't remember Symmons swearing before.

“God.”

“Devil.”

“Right.”

“Wrong.”

“Plastic.”

“Cup.” It caught O'Farrell as absurd and he came dangerously close to laughing, only just managing to subdue a reaction he knew to be wrong. Nothing insignificant, he thought again.

“Boy.”

“Son.” Saturday tomorrow: the day for the weekly call to John. Stop drifting! No room now for inconsequential intrusions.

“Car.”

“Engine.”

“Oppressor.”

“Russia.” It
had
to do with his mother!

“Murder.”

“Crime.” Another link, to the first two words, surely!

“Gun.”

“Weapon.” And again! O'Farrell thought he could feel some dampness on his hands now.

“School.”

“Class.”

“Capital.”

“Punishment.” Damn! The man had meant “capitol.”

“Birth.”

Death was the first word that entered O'Farrell's mind, the reply he should have given according to the rules of the examination. Cheating, he said, “Baby.”

“Age.”

“Retire.”

“Rat.”

“Enemy.” Could have done better there.

“Accuse.”

“Defend.”

“Traitor.”

“Spy.”

“Hang.”

“Kill” was the word but O'Farrell didn't say it: his mind wouldn't produce a substitute and Symmons said, “Quicker! You're not allowed to consider the responses! You know that! Hang.”

“Picture.”

“Sex.”

“Wrong.” Why the hell had he said that; it didn't even make sense! O'Farrell hoped the perspiration wasn't obvious on his face.

“Gamble.”

“Streak.”

“Family.”

“Life.”

“Wife.”

“Protector.” Better: much better.

“Sentence.”

“Justice.” Damn again! Why hadn't he said someming like “words” or “book”!

“Evil.”

“Destroy.” How he felt. But maybe there should have been a different reply. It sounded like a piece of dialogue from one of those ridiculous revenge films where the hero bulged wim muscles and glistened with oil and could take out twenty opponents with a flick of his wrist without disarranging his hairstyle.

“Dedication.”

Once more O'Farrell stopped short of the instinctive response—“absolute”—but without the hesitation that had brought about the previous rebuke. He said, “Resolution.”

Symmons raised both hands in a warding-off gesture and said, “Okay. Enough!”

Enough for what or for whom? queried O'Farrell. He wasn't sure (careful, never decide upon anything unless you're absolutely sure) but he had the impression of another change from their earlier encounters: before this Ping-Pong of words had always seemed to last longer than it had today. Continuing the analogy, O'Farrell wondered who had won the game. He wanted desperately to ask the psychologist how he had done, but he didn't. The question would have shown an uncertain man and he could never be shown to be uncertain. O'Farrell said, without sufficient thought, “You sure?”

Symmons smiled, a baring of teeth more than a humorous expression. He said, “That's the trouble. Ever being sure.”

Don't react, thought O'Farrell: the stupid bastard was playing another sort of word game. What the fuck (obscene, he remembered) right did this supposedly scientific, aloof son of a bitch have to make judgments on the state of someone else's mind? Didn't statistics prove that these jerks—psychiatrists or psychologists or whatever they liked to call themselves—had the highest mentally disordered suicide rates of any claimed medical profession? Important to present the correct reaction, O'Farrell thought: glibly confident, he decided. He said, “Your problem, doc: you're the one who's got to be sure.”

“You're right,” agreed the other man, discomfortingly. “My problem; always my problem.”

Symmons smiled, waiting, and O'Farrell smiled back, waiting. The silence built up, growing pressure behind a weakened dam about to burst. Mustn't break, O'Farrell told himself. Mustn't break; couldn't break. It had to be Symmons who spoke first: who had to give in.

He did. The psychologist said, “How do you feel about colors?”

O'Farrell smiled again, enjoying his victory, and said, “Why don't you find out?”

O'Farrell considered the color test—matching colors, identifying colors, blending colors into the right sections of a spectrum divided into primary hues—easier than the verbal inquisition and finished it feeling quite satisfied that he had made no errors; done well, in fact.

The physical examination was as complete as the mental probe. O'Farrell, well aware of the procedure, stripped to a tied-at-the-back operation gown and subjected himself to two hours of intense and concentrated scrutiny. Symmons put him in a soundproof room for audio tests and plunged it into absolute blackness for the eyesight check. Before putting O'Farrell on a treadmill, the man took blood samples, as well as checking blood pressure and lung capacity. The man gradually increased the treadmill speed, pushing O'Farrell to an unannounced but obviously predetermined level. O'Farrell was panting and weak-legged when it finished.

O'Farrell was weighed and measured—thighs and chest and waist as well as biceps—and touched his toes for Symmons to make an anal investigation and spread his legs and coughed when Symmons told him to cough.

O'Farrell dressed unhurriedly, wanting some small redress for the indignities. He fixed and then refixed his tie and arranged the tuck of his shirt around a hard waist to spread the creases and carefully parted and combed his hair. The reflected image was of a neat, unobtrusive, unnoticed man, fading fair hair cropped close against the encroaching gray; smooth-faced; open, untroubled eyes; no shake or twitching mannerisms visible at all. All right, thought O'Farrell, actually moving his lips in voiceless conversation with himself; you're all right, so don't worry.

“Will I live?” he demanded as he emerged from the dressing area, caught by the cynicism of a further attempt at glibness. That was all right, too: Symmons didn't know. Only a very few people knew.

Symmons stayed hunched over the formidable bundle of files and documents and folders that constituted O'Farrell's medical record. Symmons said, “A shade over one hundred and forty-eight pounds?”

“I saw it register on the machine.”

“The same as you were twenty years ago.” Symmons smiled up at him. “That's remarkable at forty-six: there's usually a weight increase whether you like it or not.”

“I suppose I'm lucky.”

“Still not smoking?”

“Hardly likely I'll start now, is it?”

“And still only one martini at night?”

“No more.” That was near truth enough.

“What about worries?”

“I don't have any.”

“Everyone has something to worry about,” challenged the man.

But what precisely was the
something
—the doubt—making him feel as he did? O'Farrell said, “Lucky again, I guess.”

“That makes you a very unusual guy indeed,” Symmons insisted.

“I don't think of myself being unusual in any way,” O'Farrell said. Didn't he?

“What about money difficulties?”

Damn that reaction to the financial question. O'Farrell said, with attempted forcefulness, “None.”

“None at all?” pressed Symmons.

“No.”

“What about sex? Everything okay between you and Jill?”

They did not make love with the regularity or with the need they'd once had, but when they did, it was always good. O'Farrell said, “Everything's fine.”

“What about elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere?” O'Farrell asked, choosing to misunderstand.

“Any sudden affairs?”

It was a fairly regular question, acknowledged O'Farrell. Getting satisfaction from the reply, he said, “None.”

“You've said that before,” the doctor reminded him unnecessarily.

“It's been true before, like it is now.”

“Not a lot of guys who say that are telling the truth.”

“I am,” said O'Farrell, who was. He'd never ever considered another woman, knew he never would.

“Jill must be a very special lady.”

“She is,” said O'Farrell, bridling.

The psychologist discerned the reaction at once. “It worry you to talk about her?”

“It worries me to talk about her in the context of screwing somebody else.” Where was he being led? “Jill hasn't got any part of this,” he said.

“Any part of what?”

“What I do.” Fucked you, you self-satisfied bastard, he thought, knowing that Symmons couldn't ask the obvious follow-up question.

“That worry you, what you do?”

O'Farrell swallowed at the ease of the other man's escape. “No,” he said, pleased with the evenness of his own voice. “What I do doesn't worry me.”

“What does worry you?”

“I told you already: nothing.”

“Been to the graves lately?”

It had been a long time coming. “Not for quite a while.”

“Why not?”

“No particular reason.”

“That used to worry you,” the psychologist said.

O'Farrell felt the slight dampness of discomfort again. “Wrong emotion,” he insisted. “It was sadness that something that happened to her so young made her later do what she did.”

“Lose her mind, you mean?” Symmons was goading him.

“That. And the rest.”

“Never feel any guilt? That you could have done more but didn't?”

“No,” O'Farrell insisted again. “No one knew. Guessed.”

“Looks like that's it, then,” Symmons said abruptly.

O'Farrell had not expected the sudden conclusion. He said, “See you in three months then?” The squirrels were still swarming over the trees. O'Farrell had an irrational urge to ask the man if they damaged his garden but decided against it: he couldn't give a damn whether they chewed up everything.

“Maybe,” Symmons said, noncommittal.

He would be expected to respond to the doubt, O'Farrell realized. So he didn't. He let Symmons lead him back across the coldly patterned hallway and at the entrance gave the perfunctory farewell handshake. Because he guessed the man might be watching from some vantage point, he did not hesitate when he got into the car, as if he needed to recover, but started the engine at once. He carefully controlled his exit, not overaccelerating to make the wheels spin but going out as fast as he could, an unconcerned man wanting to get back to work as quickly as possible after an intrusive disruption. Which he actually didn't want to do. He was only about thirty minutes—forty-five at the outside—from Lafayette Square, and Petty would expect him to come in, but O'Farrell decided on unaccustomed impulse not to bother. A call would do. Start the weekend early, instead: that was what half the people in Washington did anyway.

O'Farrell drove without any positive goal, the road dropping constantly toward the capital. He
had
done all right, he decided, repeating the dressing-room assurance. But he'd been stupid to try to find significance in Symmons's questions: he'd have to avoid that next time. There'd been one or two moments when he'd come near to making mistakes by wrongly concentrating upon what the psychologist meant rather than upon what he was saying, but nothing disastrous.

Jill wouldn't be home yet. And she might think it odd if he were in the house ahead of her, because it hardly ever happened. Maybe he should go to Lafayette Square after all. No, he rejected once more. What then? O'Farrell started to concentrate on his surroundings and realized he was near Georgetown and made another impulsive decision. If he were going to goof off, why not really goof off?

O'Farrell got a parking place on Jefferson and walked back up to M Street, choosing the bar at random. Inside, he sat at the bar itself, selecting with professionally instilled instinct a stool at its very end, where there was a wall closing off one side. He hesitated only momentarily when the barman inquired: the martini was adequate but not as good as those he made at home.