The Analyst (6 page)

He nodded in reply.

“Good,” she said brusquely. “Why would you think that this visit today is any different from any other? Even though it obviously is.”

He did not reply. Again, he remained quiet for a second or two, just eyeing the young woman, hoping to unsettle her. But she seemed oddly cold-blooded and even-tempered, and silence, which he knew is often the most disturbing sound of all, seemed to not affect her. Finally, he spoke quietly, “I am at a disadvantage. You seem to know much about me, and at least a little something about what happens here in this room, and I don’t even know your name. I would like to know what you mean when you say Mr. Zimmerman has ended his treatment, because I have had no contact from Mr. Zimmerman, which is extremely unlikely. And I would like to know what your connection is to the individual you call Mr. R. and whom I presume is the same person who sent me the threatening letter signing it Rumplestiltskin. I would like the answers to these questions promptly. Otherwise, I will call the police.”

She smiled again. Unflustered.

“Practicality intrudes?”

“Answers,” he replied.

“Isn’t that what we’re all searching for, Ricky? Everyone who steps through that door into this room. Answers?”

He did not respond. Instead he reached for the telephone.

“Do you not imagine that in his own way, that is what Mr. R. wants, as well? Answers to questions that have plagued him for years. Come now, Ricky: Don’t you agree that even the harshest sort of revenge starts with a simple question?”

This was intriguing, Ricky thought. But the interest he might have had in the observation was overcome by his growing irritation with the young woman’s manner. She displayed nothing except a confident arrogance. He put his hand on the receiver. He was at a loss for anything else to do.

“Please respond promptly to my questions,” he said. “Otherwise I will turn all this over to the police and let them sort it out.”

“No sense of sport, Ricky? No interest in playing the game?”

“I fail to see what sort of game is involved with sending disgusting, threatening pornography to an impressionable girl. Nor do I see the game in demanding that I kill myself.”

“But, Ricky,” the woman grinned, “wouldn’t that be the biggest game of all? Outplaying death?”

This made him pause, hand still hovering over the telephone. The young woman pointed at his hand. “You can win, Ricky. But not if you pick up that telephone and dial 911. Then someone, somewhere, will lose. That promise has been made, and trust me, it will be kept. Mr. R. is, if nothing else, a man of his word. And when that someone loses, you lose, too. This is only Day One, Ricky. To give up now would be like conceding defeat right after the opening kickoff. Before you’ve even had time to run a single play from scrimmage.”

He pulled his hand back.

“Your name?” he asked.

“For today and for the purposes of the game, call me Virgil. Every poet needs a guide.”

“Virgil is a man’s name.”

The woman who called herself Virgil shrugged broadly. “I have a girlfriend who goes by the name Rikki. Does this make a difference?”

“No. And your connection to Rumplestiltskin?”

“He’s my employer. He’s extremely wealthy and able to hire all sorts of assistance. Any kind of assistance he wants. To achieve whatever means and ends he envisions for whatever plan he has in mind. Currently, he is preoccupied with you.”

“So, presumably, then as an employee, you have his name, an address, an identity which you could simply pass on to me and end this foolishness once and for all.”

Virgil shook her head. “Alas, no, Ricky. Mr. R. is not so naive as to fail to insulate his identity from mere factotums, such as myself. And, even if I could help you, I wouldn’t. Hardly be sporting. Imagine if the poet and his guide had looked up at the sign that said ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here!… ‘ and Virgil had shrugged and said, ‘No shit. You don’t want to go in there… ‘ Why, that would have ruined the poem. Can’t write an epic about turning away at the gates of Hell, can you, Ricky? Nope. Got to walk through that doorway.”

“Why, then, are you here?”

“I told you. He thought you might doubt his sincerity-though that young lady with the stodgy and utterly predictable dad up in Deerfield who had her teenage emotions rearranged so easily should have been message enough for you. But doubts sow hesitation and you have only two weeks left to play, which is a short enough time. Hence, he sent a bona fide guide to get you jump-started. Me.”

“All right,” Ricky said. “You keep talking about this game. Well, it is not a game to Mr. Zimmerman. He has been in analysis for slightly less than a year, and his treatment is at an important stage. You and your employer, the mysterious Mr. R., can screw around with me. That’s one thing. But it is altogether something different when you involve my patients. That crosses a boundary…”

The young woman called Virgil held up her hand. “Ricky, try not to sound so pompous.”

Ricky stopped and stared harshly at the woman.

She ignored this look, and with a small wave of her hand, added, “Zimmerman was elected to become part of the game.”

Ricky must have looked astonished, because Virgil added, “Not so eagerly at first, I’m told, but with an odd sort of enthusiasm after a short time. But I wasn’t a participant in that particular conversation so I can’t help you with those details. My role was different. I’ll tell you who did get involved, however. A middle-aged and somewhat disadvantaged woman who calls herself LuAnne, which is a pretty name, admittedly unusual and not very fitting given her precarious position on this planet. Anyway, Ricky, when I leave here, I think you’d be wise to have a talk with LuAnne. Who knows what you might learn? And, I’m certain you will pursue Mr. Zimmerman for an explanation, but I’m quite sure he will not be so readily available. As I said, Mr. R. is very wealthy and accustomed to getting his way.”

Ricky was about to demand a better clarification; the words were partway formed on his lips, when Virgil stood up. “Do you mind,” she said huskily, “if I remove my raincoat?”

He gestured widely with his hand, a motion that spoke of acceptance. “If you like,” he said.

She smiled again, and slowly unbuttoned the front snaps and unfastened the belt around the waist. Then, in a single, abrupt motion, she shrugged the coat from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.

She wore nothing beneath.

Virgil placed one hand on her hip and cocked her body in his direction provocatively. She pivoted about, turning her back momentarily, then swung around again, facing him. Ricky took in the entirety of her figure in a single glance, eyes working like a photographer’s camera, capturing her breasts, her sex, her long legs, and then finally returning to her eyes. These glowed with anticipation.

“See, Ricky,” she said softly, “you’re not so old. Can’t you feel blood rushing about inside you? A little stirring between the legs, no? I have quite a figure, don’t I?” She giggled once. “You don’t have to answer. I’m well aware of the response. I’ve seen it before, in other men.”

Her eyes continued to lock onto his own, as if insisting that she could control the direction his vision took.

“There’s always this wondrous moment, Ricky,” Virgil said, grinning widely, “when a man first takes in the sight of a woman’s body. Especially a woman’s body he hasn’t seen before. A view that is all adventure. His eyes simply cascade like water over a cliff, right down the front. Then, just like now, for you, where you’d rather be staring between my legs, there is this guilty bit of eye contact. It’s as if the man is trying to say that he still sees me as a person, looking at my face, but in reality he’s thinking like a beast, no matter how educated and sophisticated he might pretend to be. Isn’t that what’s happening now?”

He did not reply. He realized that it had been years since he’d been in the presence of a naked woman, a realization that seemed to be making a loud, reverberating noise deep within him. His ears rang with every word Virgil spoke and he was aware that he felt hot, as if the day’s heat outdoors had burst uninvited into the office room.

She continued to smile at him. She pivoted about a second time, displaying her figure again. She held her pose, lingering first in one position, then another, like an artist’s model trying to find just the correct posture. Each turn of her body seemed to increase the temperature in the office by a few more degrees. Then she slowly bent down and picked the black raincoat off the floor. She held it out in front of her for a second, as if she were reluctant to put it back on. But then, in a swift motion, she slid her arms into the sleeves and began to fasten it tightly in front of her. As her naked form disappeared, Ricky felt almost as if he were emerging from some sort of hypnotic trance, or, at least, what he thought it must feel like when a patient emerges from under an anesthetic. He started to speak, but Virgil held up her hand, stopping him.

“Sorry, Ricky,” she said curtly. “The session has ended for today. I’ve given you lots of information, and now it’s up to you to act. That’s not something you do well, is it? What you do is listen. And then nothing. Well, those times have ended, Ricky. Now you’ll have to get out into the world and do something. Otherwise… well, let’s not think of the otherwise. When the guide points, you have to take the path. Don’t get caught sitting about. Idle hands-blah, blah, blah. The early worm catches the whatever. There’s some extremely good advice. Be sure you take it.”

She strode quickly toward the exit door.

“Wait,” he said impulsively. “Will you be back?”

“Who knows?” Virgil replied with a small grin. “Maybe from time to time. We’ll see how you do.” Then she tugged open the door and exited.

He listened for a moment to the click-clack of her heels in the corridor, then he jumped up and raced over to the door. He pulled it open, but Virgil had already disappeared from the hallway. He paused a moment, then retreated back into his office, heading toward the window. He thrust himself up to the windowpane, staring out, just in time to see the young woman emerge from the front of the apartment building. As he watched, a long black limousine slithered to the front, and Virgil stepped from the curb, into the vehicle. The car slid away down the street, moving too suddenly for Ricky to observe the license plate or any other identifying characteristics even if he had been organized and clever enough to think of doing this.

Sometimes off the beaches of Cape Cod, up in Wellfleet near his vacation home, there are strong rip currents that form, and which can be dangerous, and occasionally fatal. They are created by the repetitive force of the ocean pounding against the shore, which eventually digs a bit of a furrow beneath the waves in the sandbars that guard the beach. When the space opens up, the incoming water suddenly finds a new location for its return race to the sea, pouring back through this underwater channel. On the surface, the rip current is established. When one is caught in the rip, there are a couple of tricks one must adhere to, which make the experience unsettling, perhaps scary, certainly exhausting, but primarily inconvenient. Ignore the tricks, and one is likely to die. Because the rip is narrow, one should never fight the flow. One should merely swim parallel to the shore, and within seconds the fierce tug of the current will slacken, leaving one with a simple haul to the beach. In fact, rips are generally short, as well, so one can ride them out and when the pull diminishes, adjust location accordingly and swim back to the beach. These, Ricky knew, are the simplest of instructions, and spoken on firm ground at a cocktail party, or even standing in loose and hot sand at the side of the ocean, makes it sound as if extracting oneself from a rip current is no more trouble than flicking a sand flea from the skin.

The reality, of course, is significantly harder. Being inexorably swept toward the ocean, away from the safety of the beach, creates panic instantly. Being caught in a force far stronger than any one individual is terrifying. Fear and the ocean are a lethal combination. Terror and exhaustion follow quickly. It seemed to Ricky that he read about at least one drowning every summer in the
Cape Cod Times
where the doomed swimmer had died only a few short feet from shore and safety.

Ricky tried to grip hard on his emotions, because he felt caught in a rip.

He took a deep breath and fought against the sensation that he was being tugged toward something dark and dangerous. As soon as the limousine bearing Virgil had departed from his view, he had seized his appointment book and found Zimmerman’s number where he’d written it down on the front page, and then forgotten about it, never once having been forced to call the patient. He’d rapidly dialed the exchange, only to be greeted by empty ringing. No Zimmerman. No Zimmerman’s overprotective mother. No answering machine or service. Just a steady, frustrating ringing.

He had, in that moment of confusion, decided he’d best speak directly with Zimmerman. And, even if the man had been somehow bribed by Rumplestiltskin to end his treatment, perhaps, Ricky thought, he could shed some light on who his tormentor was. Zimmerman was a bitter man, but not one capable of holding a secret, regardless of what he’d been told to do. Ricky slammed down the telephone in mid-unanswered ring, and seized his coat. Within seconds he was out his doorway.

The city streets were still filled with sunlight, though it was well into the dinner hour. The residue of rush-hour traffic continued to clog the roadways, though the commuting crowds jamming the sidewalks had thinned some. New York, like any great city, even though it boasts of a twenty-four-hour life, still functioned on the same rhythms as anywhere: energy in the morning, determination at midday, hunger in the evening. He ignored the packed restaurants, although more than once he caught an inviting smell as he passed one by. But this evening, Ricky Starks’s hunger was of a far different sort.