Salter, Anna C (9 page)

"Would she let a stranger get into her owner's bedroom while the owner was there?"

"Michael, you ask the stupidest questions," Mama said with a snort. And to think I wondered where my lack of tact comes from.

I didn't say anything. It seemed clear there hadn't been anybody in Camille's room last night. I hadn't really thought so, but she had been so oddly sure. "Sounds like you got somebody with some trouble," Mama volunteered.

"The world is full of trouble," I said.

"Ain't it the truth?" she said. It was a rare moment when Mama and I agreed. I almost felt uncomfortable.

I said good-bye, hung up, and wandered back inside. I opened the fridge looking for some more ice tea and saw cartons of Chinese food. Christ, Adam. I had almost forgotten about him; last night seemed a zillion miles away. I got up and walked around. No sign he had ever been there: no note, nothing. Maybe he'd come to the end of it. No question someone could get a little tired of my stuff. I couldn't tell how I felt about that; maybe the comment about Jordan was still too raw.

I got the ice tea and, on impulse, sat down at the computer as I was walking by. I'd just compose the note tonight. I wouldn't send it. I'd just play around with it. I opened up my e-mail program and stared at the screen. What exactly was my plan? I sat there a while before I wrote.

I'll be interested in what you choose, Mr. Willy. Sure, you can start the same old routines again, but aren't they a little "been there, done that" by now? Of course, you will eventually get caught, but a lot of people actually seem to like prison. Maybe you're one of thenn.

I don't think you have a choice, anyway. I personally do not believe you could control your appetites if you tried. You're not really their master; you're more like their slave. Either way, I'm not involved. I don't have a role, Mr. Willy, except maybe the Greek chorus, or else Cassandra predicting doom.

If Willy had an Achilles' heel it was his narcissism. He wouldn't like the notion that he couldn't control his appetites. In Willy's mind he wasn't a slave to anything. No sense in not trying to turn that narcissistic grandiosity against him.

My hand hovered over the "Send" button. It would be smarter to wait. Let twenty-four hours pass at least. Make Willy wait. Responding too soon might be read as a sign of anxiety. Besides, I wouldn't feel safe once I sent it.

I pressed it anyway. The story came to mind of the scorpion who bit the horse carrying him to safety across a stream. When the horse had asked why, the scorpion had said, "Because it's my nature." I had my nature as surely as Willy had his, and it was my nature to serve and volley, not to sit back at the baseline and wait for the ball.

I don't know what got me so nervous about the whole thing afterward. I just kept seeing the "Send" button in my mind, although this time it was labeled "Start," instead.

It was Saturday, but I didn't wake up feeling any better. I had that pregame edginess I'd had in high school before a big game. Winning was a big deal at the time, although even then I had had enough perspective to know Lombardi had gone off the deep end when he said winning was the only thing. Winning wasn't the only thing when you're playing a game. But actually, when you're dealing with a sexual sadist who wants to maim and murder you, maybe it is.

I ought to be circling the wagon trains and handing out rifles, but it was hard to circle a single wagon. I needed to be rallying the troops, but I didn't. It wasn't that people didn't want to help. It was just that I didn't exactly know how to take their help without feeling diminished somehow.

I put the coffee cup down on the table next to the bed and stood up. My whole train of thought was depressing. I hated running into my own limitations, and I seemed to do it all the time. I could do this; I couldn't do that. I had more knots in my psyche than any sailor knew.

I needed to expand my horizons —at least get back some lost territory — and today was as good a day as any. Ridiculous to think I couldn't go play ball in a gym alone. I had done it my whole life. Just because someone strangled me in a gym. It wasn't the gym's fault.

But why did he have to do it in a gym? Why contaminate my favorite place in the whole world? Why not a beauty parlor or the Miss America pageant or a meeting? Any meeting. Why not the Chairman of Psychiatry's office? I could live without any of those places easily.

Well, in all fairness to my attacker, probably because it would have been hard to find me in any of those other places. I'd never been to the Miss America meat market in my whole life, and I didn't hang around beauty parlors. In Psychiatry, my hatred of meetings was legendary. Not to mention that I went to the Chairman's office only when I had to, usually about some dumb meeting or other I'd missed.

I went to the closet to get my precious high-top basketball shoes and started to bend over to pick them up. But as I did so, I could suddenly feel a forearm pressing into my throat. I straightened up and tried to catch my breath. Jesus Christ. Was this going to plague me for the rest of my life? I had Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and I hated it.

Having PTSD meant every time something reminded me of being strangled, I had the same feelings and the same physical sensations I had when I was being strangled. It also meant reminders would kick off intrusive memories and sometimes even nightmares. Camille had the same thing, only worse. She actually heard the perp's voice. My PTSD wasn't quite that bad. But it was miserable enough.

I bent over to get the shoes again, but the memory of my assaulter's face close to mine came up so vividly I shuddered involuntarily and stood up again. I backed away from the shoes and just stared at them.

I can do this. I can make myself do this. It crossed my mind that it might be more sensible to go to the gym with someone else the first time. But as John Belushi would have said, "Nah." I didn't want to. I could just see myself: "Adam, I'm scared to go to the gym alone. Will you come hold my hand?" Unbelievable. Impossible.

I started to reach for the shoes and then stopped. The memory of being strangled was so strong I was short of breath. I sat down on the bed and thought about it. Damn it, I could make myself take those shoes and go to the gym, and some day I'd have to. But it was clear whenever I did, I'd pay a price: I'd kick up the memory again big time.

People with PTSD avoid things that remind them of the trauma for a reason. I knew that. If I went to the gym, the price I would pay would be intrusive memories and a constant feeling of being suffocated. Not to mention nightmares. I could do it. But maybe I'd better get rid of Willy first.

Between the perp in my head and the one on the street, Willy was the bigger threat, I figured. Don't get crazy because you can't stand to be controlled. Being strangled will be sitting in your head whenever you get around to it. But how many wars can you fight at once on how many fronts? If you use up your resources tackling that, you'll have less to deal with Willy.

Hell of a thing. Every fiber in me wanted to grab the b-ball shoes and say, "Fuck you, you SOB. Do your worst." But I didn't. I was going to have to live with this for a while; that's all there was to it. If I didn't, I'd end up with two assaulters in my head, assuming I still had one.

I have a surgeon's mentality—a knife-happy surgeon. Cut it out! Get rid of it! That is my favorite thing to do with problems. I couldn't believe I was consciously, deliberately making a decision to live with something—worse, something akin to a leech on my psyche. But it was true that if I didn't live with it I might die with it. And death was the kind of problem you just didn't want to get into.

Next to my b-ball shoes were my riding boots. Why not? I was so frustrated I felt like punching something. Why not go tackle a few fixed crosscountry jumps? I sighed again and reached for the boots.

I hopped in my car, which was clean and Spartan. I can't believe people spend money on cars. All cars do the same thing. They go from here to there. My idea of a car is something with four wheels and a seat. Well, okay, a motor that starts in the winter and doesn't break down. Whatever car I've had, it is always Basic Car. Small. Cheap. No frills.

Not like the Porsche a friend had when I was a student. He lived upstairs from me, and he was out two or three times a night when the alarm went off. Thieves are drawn to Porsches like mosquitoes to blood. Forget it. I never had a car I had to lock because I never had a car anybody wanted to steal.

I picked up the Interstate and headed out to the old Braxton Farm. There was a trendy riding academy closer in, where all the students and the professors' children rode, but it never crossed my mind to go there. The academy barn always looked freshly painted. Once, I went by there and they had flower boxes on the barn windows. Too precious for me. I had found an old farm in the country that trained serious event horses and that was often looking for riders to exercise them.

The sign on the gate simply said "Braxton's Farm." Braxton had been gone a century. Joe Higgins had the place now, but Braxton's Farm it was and Braxton's Farm it would stay. I pulled up next to the weathered barn and surveyed the scene. The exterior of the barn looked like it always did: gray and battered. The fences all needed a new coat of paint. Joe never got around to details like that. But the place was neat and clean and looked like it was designed to be more comfortable for horses than for humans.

Mud season was beginning to relent. The outdoor ring looked ride-able, if barely. That was disappointing. I was planning on using that as an argument for going crosscountry since the crosscountry course was on a hill and dried out sooner in the spring. Joe thought me a little too gung-ho for the crosscountry course and often restricted me to the ring. Worse, since he'd built the indoor ring, I didn't even get outside half the time.

I found him saddling up a young chestnut mare I didn't recognize. Joe was a trim, good-looking man in his sixties with graying hair wearing a flannel workshirt with riding pants and boots, I'd never seen him in anything else. He looked a lot like the barn: weathered but solid with no frills.

"Good," he said, looking up. 'T was just thinking about you. I'm taking this new mare on the crosscountry course for the first time, and I was wishing somebody was here to take Freight Train with us."

Had I died and gone to heaven or what? I didn't even have to argue with him. "Delighted," I said. "What's going on with Freight Train?" Freight Train was a very capable, reliable jumper, and I didn't usually get to ride problem-free horses.

"His new rider is what's wrong with Freight Train. I wish to God parents would quit buying horses their kids can't handle. Freight Train's going to hell in a handbasket. He's jumping all strung out, and he's going to kill that kid if I don't get him under control."

It seemed odd to be taking a horse on the crosscountry course to get him under control. Usually, that kind of work was done in the ring, where horses were much less pumped up than in the open air galloping free. But I didn't say a thing. I sure as hell wasn't going to talk Joe out of it.

"Control, Michael. I want this horse under control. I should work him in the ring, but I don't have time. The kid's parents are insisting on a novice event next weekend, and right now, in the mood he's in. Freight Train will eat that kid alive on a crosscountry course." Joe stopped saddling and looked over the horse's back at me. "We are taking these jumps slow and easy, Michael, or we are coming back to the barn. Half the time you're worse than Freight Train."

"Hey, I just got here. Don't take it out on me." I was miffed. Joe and I had a running argument about whether I jumped too fast or not. It was a bum rap. Just because I couldn't see lolly-gagging around in front of a jump. I always jumped in control, or at least I tried to.

I went in the tack room to get Freight Train's gear. The tack was shiny with leather oil, and the smell of leather oil was sweet in the air. Each horse's halter and bridle were hung neatly on a hook and labeled. The saddles were on racks across the room.

I got Freight Train's halter and bridle and picked out a jumping saddle —a big jumping saddle —that would likely fit him. I dropped his tack off near the cross-ties where I would saddle him and went off to fetch him with his halter and a lead line. All the stalls had wooden signs with the horses' names on them, and I wandered around until I found him. I could have asked Joe, but I didn't feel like it. He was too crabby today, and I was still miffed.

The top half of Freight Train's stable door was open, and I looked in to make sure it was really him in his stall. The horse inside was too big to be anybody else, and I opened the bottom half of the stable door and stood for a moment just admiring him as the sun slanted in across his stall.

He was a big bay thoroughbred at seventeen hands. He had thick, tough legs unlike most thoroughbreds, whose spindly legs are their downfall. The sunlight made stripes across his shiny, brown coat and it looked almost red where the light hit it. Freight Train turned to look at me with his big, curious eyes. Even munching his hay, his eyes had that deep thoroughbred light in them.

Ah, thoroughbreds. They have heart Hke no other horse. Who else will literally run themselves to death tor you if you aren't careful? Who else will look at a crosscountry jump and start salivating? They go when they shouldn't go, couldn't go, would damage themselves by going. You might have to put on the brakes a lot, but you never have to pedal.

All right, they have their flaws —high-strung natures, spindly legs —and more than a few have lousy personalities, just plain cranky. A lot of thoroughbreds would as soon bite you as look at you, and if you haven't been kicked by a thoroughbred or dumped by one, it means you don't ride them. But in the end there are thoroughbreds and then there are a lot of other animals.

"Freight Train, dear heart," I said, slipping on his halter, "care to go for a spin? Perhaps a turn around the crosscountry course." Freight Train's ears perked up. Of course he didn't recognize the words, but he could hear the excitement in my voice.