The Frenchman's Slow Seduction (12 page)

Chapter 16

There are two messages
spray painted in red on the outside of the clinic when I get to
work:
“Death to all traitors! Let them reap what they sow!”
Red scrawls glisten on brown brick: a weeping wound. Mike pulls up
in his truck.

“What the hell’s going
on?” he says. “Who could be doing this stuff?”

He notifies the police
of the new development and pays someone double the going rate to
start on the clean up right away. Haunted by someone or something
we don’t understand, we all go through the day subdued.

Clinic ends late, so by
the time I get to Bryan’s place, he’s already outside loading
equipment into his jeep.

“I thought you forgot,”
he says.

I tell him about the
spray painted message and surprise myself by crying.

Bryan puts his arms
around me.

“I can’t take it
anymore, Bryan. I want out of this nightmare. The whole thing has
me spooked.”

“I’ll call work and
tell them I’ll be late.”

I pull away. “No. Don’t
be crazy. I’ll be fine. I’ll call Michelle if I need someone to
talk to.”

He touches my cheek. “I
hate leaving you right now.”

“I’ll be fine. Drop by
in the morning.”

Later, as I pull into
the parking area of my apartment building, a dark feeling overtakes
me. I whisper Nathaniel’s name and glimpse a shadow in the
distance, and I know it’s him.

Several times through
the night, I have the same dark feeling. Whispering Nathaniel’s
name, I instantly feel better.

Around midnight, I
finally finish the Texas conference material. Ecstatic, I take a
celebratory shower and blissfully fall into bed.

In the wee hours, a
loud ringing jolts me awake. It’s the phone. Checking my clock
radio, I see that it’s five o’clock. I pick up the phone.

“Rachel, it’s me,” Mike
says. “There’s been a car accident. Two German shepherds are badly
injured. I’m at the clinic. Can you come in?”

“Of course,” I tell
him. “I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

After quickly getting
dressed, I leave a message on Bryan’s mobile telling him not to
drop by, and then leave.

“Hi, Rach,” Tim says,
when I get to the clinic. “What a bloody mess.”

Both dogs need surgery
for broken bones, and one of them needs his jaw wired. By eight
o’clock, both dogs are in stable condition and the three of us are
exhausted -- more from the non-stop adrenaline rush than the
physical work. Surgery is like that. If it’s going well, it’s
boring; if there are problems, it’s incredibly stressful.

Lucy and Shane arrive,
closely followed by morning clients. By three thirty, I’m wrecked,
but decide to keep my appointment at Northcliff. Before I leave,
Mike calls me into the front office. After he sits in his chair, I
lean on the door jamb.

“I wanted to talk to
you about the Texas conference, Rachel. I don’t feel I can go. I
couldn’t leave the locum to deal with all the stuff going on around
here. You don’t know how much I really want to go, but it’s just
not possible. Would you mind going on your own? You’re fully
capable of giving the whole talk.”

“Gosh, Mike. That
doesn’t seem right. It’s your paper. I can stay if you like.”

He shakes his head.
“No, I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving you to deal with this
mess. It only makes sense that you go.”

“I don’t mind going on
my own.”

“Good.” Leaning back in
his chair, he stretches his back. “So, how do you feel about
things?”

“The spray painting
thing has me spooked.”

“Yeah, well there’s
nothing else the creep can do. He was probably frustrated at not
being able to get at the money.”

“I hope you’re right.”
Looking at his wall clock, I say, “I’d better go, Mike, or I’ll be
late.”

He gets to his feet.
“Okay. Are we still on for tomorrow night?”

I want to say no, but
feel committed; it’s part of what Michelle calls my masochistic
reliability. In truth, it’s a desperate attempt to be as different
from my parents as possible.

“We’re still on,” I
tell him.

He smiles. “I was
thinking of taking off after lunch tomorrow, to get an early start
on things.”

I nod. “Okay.”

When I get to
Northcliff, Liz is waiting for me in Verna’s room.

“Oh, Rachel!” she says.
“I’ve been so worried. I had a dream about you Tuesday night. There
were tarot cards lying everywhere, and they were covered in blood.
Someone really wished you harm that night. Then I heard a voice
say, ‘It’s okay, her guardian angel is with her.’”

I tell Verna and Liz
about my guardian angel, about Mike, about Bryan, and about what’s
been going on at the clinic.

Liz takes my hands.
“Rachel, you’re starting to go on the right path; but you see, he’s
still out there. The incidents at the clinic are directed at you.
He’s making a visible statement about his hatred for you. It’s a
blessing you’re traveling to Texas on Sunday. It’ll give things a
chance to calm down.”

“A break is just what
you need,” Verna says. “I always feel like a new person when I
return from a trip.”

Desperately needing a
small nap before my self-defence course, I end our visit early.
When I phone Bryan, he makes plans to drop by the following
morning.

Later that night, when
I get to the gym, Sondra saunters over to me.

I shake my head. “Sorry
to disappoint you, Sondra, but we’re still platonic. I haven’t even
seen him.”

She frowns. “What’s
your problem? You’re both crazy about each other. The stress is
killing me.”

I laugh. “You’re
incorrigible.”

She scowls. “I’m going
to look that up when I get home.”

In the gym, a
policewoman is standing alongside Sergeant McMahon.

“Tonight, cadets, we
are privileged to have Sergeant Hughes, who will help us with the
behavior modification part of the course: psychology designed to
alter what’s between your ears. Most of you know Sergeant Hughes
from your professional ethics course. Before we start, I have some
business to attend to.”

Sondra looks at me and
winks.

“Cadet Wiley, advance
to the line.”

I do as I’m told.

He puts on a vest. “On
my cue.
Go.”

I nail him.

“Sergeant Hughes will
now address you.”

“Hello, cadets,” she
says in an authoritative voice. “My job tonight is to get you to
view the world differently. To do this, I need you to think of
Earth as a giant rat cage filled with humans, with your role being
that of a psychologist, observing how the humans communicate.
Throughout the evening, as we role-play, I want you to think about
how you could change certain behaviors to achieve different
outcomes.

“I once interviewed a
rapist and asked him how he chose his victims. ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I
study women from a distance. I look at their posture and how much
they stand up for themselves. If they talk loudly and make a lot of
eye contact, or if they’re really outgoing, I know they’ll give me
a hard time. So I look for the ones that are shy and quiet, the
loners, the polite ones.’

“He impressed me with
his psychological observations. I want you to put time and energy
into making observations about your own behavior and about the
behavior of the people around you.

“We must all make
choices in all aspects of our lives, and this should include our
human interactions. Always ask yourself, ‘What is the outcome I
want here?’ Only then can you take control of a situation and
direct what happens. Otherwise you’re dealing with someone else’s
agenda; you’ll be acting defensively, like a victim. Life should be
about making active choices.”

Much of our night is
spent enacting potentially harmful situations: dates, con-artist
ploys, police arrests. At the end of the class, Sergeant Hughes
talks about the precautions needed when walking into unknown or
possibly dangerous places, stressing the importance of scanning
escape routes and of not going into an area where you can be
trapped.

At the end of the
night, she says, “From experience, I can tell you that the
strategies we’ve discussed here tonight don’t always work,
especially in heated situations. It’s a learning process, and
you’ll all learn your own techniques. Just think of yourselves as
works in progress.”

By the end of the
night, I feel liberated from a dangerous way of thinking and feel
embarrassed about how submissive I was with Craig and Reynaldo. Why
hadn’t I recognized and embraced my own power before this night?
Maybe because early on in my life too many lines had been crossed
and there was no possibility of safety. Getting out in the world
and seeing how civilized people act, I find myself having to learn
a new set of rules. In my family, making it through the day without
getting a kick or a slap was quite a coup, forget about aspiring to
anything greater. Miraculously, I’ve been thrown a life preserver,
quickly followed by a toss of the gauntlet. I’m being asked to
become a woman with my own power, with my own circle of influence,
and I find the prospect exhilarating.

In the changing room,
everyone is in a party mood but me. Rhoda calls out, “Hey, Rach,
are you up for another night of boozing?”

“I wish I was. I had a
five o’clock surgery this morning. I have to get home before I pass
out.”

“See you on Tuesday,”
Sondra says.

“Oh crap!” I say. “I
almost forgot. I’m not going to be in town next week. I’d better go
see McMahon.”

“Good luck,” she says.
“He hates no-shows.”

Sergeant McMahon is
still in the gym.

“Could I talk to you
for a moment, sir?” I ask.

“Go ahead, Cadet
Wiley.”

“I’ll be at a
conference in Texas next week, sir, so I’ll have to miss two
classes.”

“I don’t tolerate
anyone falling behind, Cadet Wiley. You’ll have to make an effort
to get caught up. I’ll get the DVDs for the two classes you’re
going to miss, and I’ll leave them at the front desk at the
station. I suggest you pair up with one of the other cadets when
you get back to get some practice.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“That’s what I’m here
for.” As I’m walking away, he says, “Have a nice trip, Cadet
Wiley.”

I’m beginning to
understand Bryan’s people -- his tribe. Tough, fun-loving,
hard-living, inexhaustible, good-hearted, and thick-skinned by
necessity, they’ll gladly take you into their circle if you’re one
of the good-guys; but I know I’m only an honorary member. I could
never keep up with them, even if I wanted to.

Chapter 17

Anxious thoughts about
Mike poke, prod, and stir me awake. I know he loves me, that’s what
makes what I have to do so difficult. If you asked most people if
their boyfriends loved them, they’d say, “Yeah, I think he does.
I’m pretty sure he does. Of course.” But I know for a fact that
Mike loves me. I got the proof on a winter night a few months after
we started dating. He and I had spent the weekend together in
Detroit and were driving back late at night through an alternating
rain and ice storm. Going up one side of a huge hill it was
raining, going down the other side the road was a sheet of ice.
Traveling at sixty miles an hour, the car threw itself into
circles, spinning us from one side of the road to the other, steep
gullies lying on either side. I surprised myself by screaming,
“I don’t want to die!”,
and as we flew over the edge of the
roadway, Mike let go of the steering wheel and threw himself over
me. That’s how I know.

Friday morning, as I’m
getting ready for work, I hear a knock on the door. The instant I
see Bryan’s face, my troubles melt away.

“Feel like some
breakfast?” I ask.

He smiles. “I’m
starving.”

While I make pancakes,
Bryan tells me work stories, and I have a funny thought: Bryan and
I are acting like an old married couple.

Later, as we’re heading
out, I kneel down in the entryway to tie my sneakers and feel Bryan
touch my hair. When I stand up, he places his hands on my
shoulders. As he starts to say something, a knock sounds on the
door. When I open it, I see Myra.

“Hi, Rachel,” she says.
Then she sees that I’m not alone. “Oh! Hi, Bryan.” Giving me a
bright smile, she says, “I wanted to know if I could get a lift
into town with you this morning, Rachel. I have a doctor’s
appointment.”

“Of course. Are you
ready now?”

“I just have to get my
purse.”

After she leaves, Bryan
touches my arm. “Do you want to do something tonight?” he asks.

My stomach tenses when
I remember where I’ll be instead. “I’d love to, but I can’t. I have
a previous commitment. How about going to the market early tomorrow
morning, around seven?”

“Sure. I’ll bring my
bike.”

When I get to the
clinic, Lucy is looking pretty glum.

“What’s wrong?” I
ask.

“You know that budgie
we were boarding for Mrs Jennings?”

“You mean Micky?”

She nods. “That’s the
one. I found him dead in his cage.”

My heart sinks. “We’ve
got to stop billeting birds,” I tell her. The last time we boarded
budgies, a cat got loose from his crate and ate them.

“I know. Mike’s pretty
upset. He sent Shane out to get another one.”

When I get to my
office, I turn on the computer. As I’m emailing Jean Paul about
traveling to the conference alone, Mike walks by.

“Mike,” I call out,
bringing him to a stop. “After dinner, I’d like for us to talk
about things.”

He nods. “Sure, I’d
like that.” Then he continues on his way to the kennel room.

Later that morning, as
I’m catching up on paperwork, I hear Mike and Shane talking in
Mike’s office.