The Analyst (10 page)

He could hear nothing, but this did not reassure him that no one was with him in the apartment. He tried to imagine where someone might hide, which closet, which corner, beneath which table. Then he tried to concentrate on those locations, as if from the seat behind his analyst’s couch, he could see into those hidden regions. But this effort, too, was unsuccessful, or, at least, he realized, unsatisfactory. He tried to remember where he might have kept a flashlight or candlesticks, guessing that if he had any, they would be in the kitchen on a shelf, probably right next to the spare lightbulbs. He stayed seated for another minute, reluctant to leave his familiar seat, managing to force himself upward only by recognizing that pursuing some sort of light was the only reasonable response.

He stepped gingerly into the center of the room, keeping his hands out in front of him again, mimicking a blind man. He was halfway across the room when the telephone on the desk rang.

The sound seared through him.

He stumbled as he pivoted toward the noise, reaching out for the sound. His hand knocked into a jar of pens and pencils he kept on his desktop, scattering them. He seized the telephone just before the sixth ring, which would have triggered his answering machine. “Hello? Hello?”

There was no response.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

The phone went dead abruptly.

Ricky held the receiver in his hand in the darkness, cursing silently to himself, then not so silently, “Goddamn it to hell!” he said loudly. “Goddamn it, Goddamn it, Goddamn it…”

He hung up the receiver, and placed both hands on the desk surface, as if exhausted and needing to catch his breath again. He cursed again, though more softly.

The phone rang again.

He lurched back in surprise, then reached out and fumbling slightly, banging the receiver against the desktop, he grabbed the receiver and thrust it to his ear. “This isn’t funny,” he said.

“Doctor Ricky,” cooed Virgil’s deep, yet kittenish voice. “No one has ever suggested this was a joke. In fact, Mr. R. is fairly humorless, or so I’m told.”

Ricky bit back on the every angry word that leapt forward to the brink of his lips. Instead, he let some silence speak for him.

After a few seconds, Virgil laughed. The sound was awful over the phone line.

“You’re still in the dark, aren’t you, Ricky?”

“Yes,” he said. “You’ve been here, haven’t you. You or someone like you broke in here while I was out and…”

“Ricky,” Virgil suddenly cooed, almost seductively, “you’re. When you’re in the dark about something, especially something simple, what do you do?”

He didn’t reply. She laughed again.

“Come on, Ricky. And you think yourself to be a master of symbolism and interpreting all sorts of mysteries? How do you shed light where there is only darkness? Why, that’s your job, isn’t it?”

She didn’t allow him a response.

“Follow the simplest trail for an answer.”

“What?” he asked.

“Ricky, I can see you’re going to need my help considerably over the next few days if you intend to make an honest effort to save your own life. Or do you prefer to sit in the dark right up to the arrival of the day that you have to kill yourself?”

He felt confused.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“You will in a moment or two,” she said firmly. Then she hung up, leaving him holding impotently on to the telephone. He took several seconds before he returned it to its cradle. The nighttime in the room seemed to envelop him, blanketing him with despair. He reviewed Virgil’s words, which seemed to him to be obtuse, cryptic, and unfathomable. He wanted to scream out that he had no idea what she meant, frustrated by both the darkness that surrounded him and the sense that his private space had been disrupted and violated. Ricky ground his teeth in anger, gripping the edge of the desk, grunting with rage. He wanted to pick something up and break it.

“A simple trail,” he almost shouted out. “There aren’t any simple trails in life!”

The sound of his own words disappearing into the blackened room had the immediate effect of quieting him. He seethed, on the verge of fury.

“Simple, simple…,” he said under his breath.

And then he had an idea. He was surprised that it managed to slide past his growing anger. “It can’t be…” he said, as he reached out with his left hand for his desk lamp. He felt the base and found the electrical cord emerging from the side. Holding this between his fingers, he traced the wire downward to where he knew it was plugged into an extension cord that ran against the wall to the outlet. He lowered himself to his knees on the floor and within a few seconds found the plug. It had been pulled from the extension. It took another few seconds of groping around for him to find the end of the extension, but he managed. He slid the plug into the receptacle and the room around him suddenly burst with light. He rose from the floor and turned to the lamp behind the couch and immediately saw that it had been unplugged, as well. He lifted his eyes to the overhead light and guessed that the bulb behind the sconce had merely been loosened.

On his desk, the telephone rang for the third time.

He picked it up, demanding “How did you get in here?”

“Don’t you think Mr. R. can afford a capable locksmith?” Virgil said coyly. “Or a professional burglar? Someone expert with the antique and outmoded dead-bolt locks you have on your front door, Ricky. Haven’t you ever considered something more modern? Electrical locking systems with lasers and infrared motion detectors? Handprint technology, or maybe even those eyeball retina recognition systems they use at government installations. You know that sort of thing is available to the general public through slightly shady and disreputable connections. Haven’t you ever had the urge to be slightly more modern in your personal security?”

“I’ve never needed that foolishness,” Ricky harrumphed pompously.

“Never had a break-in? Never been robbed? Not in all these years in Manhattan?”

“No.”

“Well,” Virgil said smugly, “I guess no one ever thought you had something worth stealing. But that’s not the case now, is it, doctor? My employer certainly does, and he seems more than willing to take all sorts of chances.”

Ricky did not reply. He looked up abruptly, staring out the office window.

“You can see me,” he said excitedly. “You’re looking at me right now, aren’t you? How else would you know that I managed to get the lights on?”

Virgil burst into a laugh. “Good for you, Ricky. You’re making some progress when finally able to state the obvious.”

“Where are you?” Ricky asked.

Virgil paused, before replying: “Close by. I’m at your shoulder, Ricky. I’m in your shadow. What good would it be to have a guide to Hell who wasn’t there when you needed her?”

He didn’t have an answer.

“Well,” Virgil continued, her voice returning to the lilting tones that Ricky was beginning to find irritating, “let me give you a little hint, doctor. Mr. R. is a sporting type. With all the planning that has gone into this modest exercise in revenge, do you think he would be unwilling to play his game with rules that you couldn’t perceive? What did you learn tonight, Ricky?”

“I learned that you and your employer are sick, disgusting people,” Ricky burst out. “And I want nothing to do with you.”

Virgil’s laugh over the telephone line was cold and flat.

“Is that what you learned? And how did you reach that particular conclusion? Now, I’m not denying it, mind you. But I’d be interested to know under what psychoanalytic or medical theory you arrived at that diagnosis when it seems to my untrained mind that you don’t know us at all. Why, you and I, we’ve had only one session. And you still have no clue as to who Rumplestiltskin is, do you? But you’re willing to jump to all sorts of conclusions. Why, Ricky, I think jumping to conclusions is dangerous for you, given the precariousness of your position. I think you should try to keep an open mind.”

“Zimmerman…,” he started with his own version of a mingling of cold and fury. “What happened to Zimmerman? You were there. Did you push him off the platform? Did you give him a little shove, or maybe just a jostle, so that he lost his balance? Do you think you can get away with murder?”

Virgil hesitated, then answered bluntly, “Yes, Ricky, I do. I think people in this day and age get away with all sorts of crimes, up to and including murder. Happens all the time. But in the case of your unfortunate patient-or should I say ex-patient?-the evidence is far stronger that he jumped. Are you absolutely sure he didn’t? No secret that he was deeply troubled. What makes you think he didn’t do himself in, using a fabulously inexpensive and efficient technique not all that uncommon in New York? A method you might soon be forced to consider yourself. Not all that terrible a way to go when you really think about it. A momentary feeling of fear and doubt, a decision, a single brave step off the platform, some screeching noise, a flash of light, and then blessed oblivion.”

“Zimmerman wouldn’t kill himself. He showed none of the classic conditions. You or someone like you pushed him in front of that subway train.”

“I admire your certainty, Ricky. It must be a happy life to be so sure about everything.”

“I’m going to go back to the police.”

“Well, you’re certainly welcome to give them another try if you think it will do you some good. Did you find them particularly helpful? Were they especially eager to listen to your analytic interpretation of events that you didn’t actually witness?”

This question quieted Ricky. He waited before he said, “All right. So, what’s next?”

“There’s a present for you. Over on your couch. See it?”

Ricky looked up swiftly and saw that there was a medium-sized blond manila envelope resting where his patients usually placed their heads. “I see it,” he replied.

“Okay,” Virgil said. “I’ll wait for you to open it up.” Before he could place the telephone down on the desktop, he heard her humming a tune that he vaguely recognized, but was unable to immediately place. Had Ricky been more of a television watcher, he might have immediately determined that Virgil was using the familiar music from the quiz show
Jeopardy
. Instead, he rose, crossed the room swiftly, and seized the envelope. It was thin, and he tore it open rapidly, removing a single sheet of paper.

It was a solitary page from a calendar. A large red
X
had been drawn through that day’s date, the first of the month of August. Thirteen days that followed were left blank. The fifteenth day was circled in red. The remaining days of the month had been blacked out.

Ricky’s mouth went dry. He looked in the envelope, but there was nothing else.

He moved slowly back to the desk and lifted the receiver.

“All right,” he said. “This isn’t hard to understand.”

Virgil’s voice remained even flowing and almost sweet. “A reminder, Ricky. That’s all. Something to help you get yourself started. Ricky, Ricky, I asked already: What have you learned?”

The question infuriated him and he was about to burst with outrage. But he bit back the fury gathering within him and, keeping tight rein over his emotions, replied instead, “I’ve learned that there don’t seem to be any boundaries.”

“Good, Ricky, good. That’s progress. What else?”

“I’ve learned not to underestimate what is happening.”

“Excellent, Ricky. More?”

“No. That’s it to this point.”

Virgil started to tsk-tsk like some caricature of a grade-school teacher. “Not true, Ricky. What you have learned, Ricky, is that everything in this game, including the likely outcome, is being played on a field uniquely designed to accommodate you. I think that my employer has been exceptionally generous, considering his alternatives. You’ve been given a chance, granted a slight one, to save someone else’s life and to save your own by answering a simple question: Who is he? And, because he doesn’t want to be unfair, he’s given you an alternative solution, less attractive for you, of course, but one that will give your sorry existence some meaning in your final days. Not many people get that sort of opportunity, Ricky. To go to their grave knowing that their sacrifice saved another from some unknown, but absolutely genuine horror. Why, this borders on sainthood, Ricky, and it’s being handed to you without the delightful three miracles that the Catholic Church usually requires, although I believe they’ll waive one or two on occasion for worthy candidates. How does one go about waiving a miracle, when that’s the standard for acceptance in the club? Ah, well, an intriguing question we can debate at length some other moment. Right now, Ricky, you should go back to the clues you have been given, and get started. Time is wasting and there’s not much of it left. Have you ever performed an analysis on deadline, Ricky? Because that is what this is all about. I’ll be in touch. Remember, Virgil is never far away.”

She took a deep breath, then added: “Got all that, Ricky?”

He remained silent, and she said it again, harsher.

“Got all that, Ricky?”

“Yes,” he said. But of course he knew that he didn’t as he hung up the phone.

Zimmerman’s ghost seemed to be laughing at him.

It was the morning after a fitful night. He had not slept much, but when he had, he had dreamed vividly, fantastically, of his dead wife sitting by his side in a vibrant red two-seater sports car that he did not recognize, but knew belonged to him. They were parked by the edge of the ocean in deep sand on a familiar beach near their vacation cottage on the Cape. It had seemed to Ricky in the dream that the gray-green Atlantic waters, the color they took on in anticipation of a storm, were sweeping ever closer to him, threatening to overtake the car in a flood tide, and he struggled madly to open the door, but when he tried to work the handle he had seen a bloodstained and grinning Zimmerman standing outside the car, holding the door closed, and he’d been trapped inside. The car would not start and somehow he knew the tires were dug down into the sand anyway. In the dream, his dead wife had seemed calm, beckoning, almost welcoming him, and he’d had little trouble interpreting all this, as he stood naked in the shower, letting lukewarm water that was neither warm nor cold flow over his head in a mildly unpleasant cascade, but one that fit his dreary mood.