This Body (31 page)

“Thisby, is something wrong?”

Katharine turned her physical attention back to the smoothies. “I lost a friend from drugs too. She wasn't a stoner, though
people thought she was. She died — it was an accident — and suddenly people — her so-called friends — started talking about
her. They said things like they knew she was a junkie all along. That was so much bullshit. She wasn't a junkie. They just
liked being part of the rumor mill. Maybe it was the same with your mom's friend.”

Katharine could almost feel the offhanded shrug that Marion must have given. What did it matter to her? It was just some long-dead
friend of her dead mother. It wasn't as if it meant anything to her.

I'm losing them — my children. No, I've lost them. I could have done real damage to Ben. I could have forced him on the very
road I was so petrified he was going to go down. And this is probably as close to Marion as I'm going to get
.

Act 4, Scene 3

I am almost out at heels.

— F
ALSTAFF
,
The Merry Wives of Windsor
, 1.3.32

Katharine drove resignedly from her appointment with Dr. Mantle to the restaurant where she was to meet True —
and the rest of them
— for dinner. True had called and explained to her that Philip — Marion's father, True added in case she didn't know who
he was referring to — and Diana — his new wife, he inserted again — had invited Katharine out to dinner with them and the
Dentons to thank her for entertaining Marion.

Katharine said yes, as if that were the only response left in her vocabulary.
Hell, it doesn't seem to matter which path I take. They've all got out-of-control, well-fueled vehicles on them, and I'm the
designated roadkill
.

It had been such a strange day, noticeable even among so many strange days. And it started early.

Mulwray called in the morning, waking up Katharine and sending her heart into arrhythmia — calls at odd hours still held the
panic of potential bad news regarding ailing parents and driving teenagers.

“What a surprise it was,” he began immediately, “to find in my operative's latest report that the very person who hired me
to keep tabs on the family is spending time with the daughter right here in LA. Now how did this come about?”

“By accident most strange.”
What does it matter? I'm paying you, aren't I
?

“I thought you said you weren't going to contact these people.”

“It just happened.”

“It just happened,” he scoffed. “I'm nobody's fool, Miss Bennet. You're not the shining example you present yourself as. In
fact, you've got yourself quite a little rap sheet. Several truancy, loitering, panhandling infractions in your teenage years.
Three counts of possession with intent to sell within the last three years. Charges dropped. Inconclusive evidence. You seem
to have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or do you? Or do you think you're above the law? Is that it?”
He paused. “Just what is your interest in the Ashley family?”

She twisted the phone cord around her hand like a garrote. “It's nothing bad. You wouldn't understand. If you're uncomfortable
about it …” She pulled the cord tighter. “In fact, why don't we just call it quits. I don't think I need the reports anymore.”

He was silent, but Katharine could feel his annoyance and suspicion coalesce into anger. “If you change your mind, I'll charge
you all the set-up fees again. Every single one of them.” He waited, but Katharine didn't respond. “I'll send you my bill,”
he said in dismissal but then added, “If I hear about anything happening to the Ashley family, even remotely odd, you'll be
hearing from me. And the police. On this one I'll make sure you'll be doin' time.”

Katharine was about to ask him if he would send her a copy of his file on Thisby when he hung up.

Katharine and the girls went down to Venice Beach later that morning. Katharine was trying to avoid thinking about her afternoon
appointment with Mantle, and Marion was trying to be cool and not gawk. She wasn't very successful, her head snapping back
and forth. “Did you see him? He was tattooed all over his chest. Look at her! She's got a bone through her nose.”

Katharine felt strangely at home. She didn't let the people in Venice bother her, anymore than they had bothered Thisby.

…
it's so fucking great down there. Weirdos and pricks and crazies. Everybody's got a story. Musicians who were gonna make it
big but some asshole stole their song or stole their lyrics or stole their voice
.

The con artists, the showmen, the vendors — all ready to snap. Supposed to be so laid-back, but nobody is
.

O brave new world peopled with such as these
…

Thisby got the quote wrong, of course: “O brave new world that has such people in 't
!”

Katharine let their cons and their makes and their curses roll off her like oil, the residue just building up a tougher hide; her skin was thickening exponentially.

The girls and Katharine had their fortunes told by an elderly Asian man with long, wispy chin hair, whose sun-bleached, brocaded jacket was too long in the sleeves, the frog buttons frayed and misshapen. He rubbed small, ivory-colored bones in his hands and rolled them out on a faded black felt square. Katharine wondered if this was the Chinaman who years ago had told Thisby that she would be dying young.

He wouldn't let them hear one another's fortune. “Tell each other later, if want.”

Both girls were surprisingly quiet about what the old man said. Quince, who had gone first, kept looking at him suspiciously
while Marion sat there, hovering over the bones as if she could read them too. The only thing Quince offered was that his
incense sucked. Marion came back, white-faced. Quince shrugged. “He just wants his money, so he says that all that good shit
is going to happen to you.” Marion didn't respond.

It was Katharine's turn; the walk over to his cardboard table seemed to take a long time.

Will he see more than I'm willing to reveal? Reveal to him or even to Mantle
.

The fortune-teller had her blow on the bones in his hands and then cascaded them onto the felt. He considered the pattern
for a long time and then rolled them again. He stared at the bones even longer this time. He finally looked up and spoke past
her left ear. “Too many paths. Very different fortunes on each path. Choose carefully.” He quickly gestured to the next person
who waited.

“What'd he say?” asked Marion, who appeared to have recovered and was too curious to keep quiet.

“I have no fortune,” Katharine replied simply.

Or I have too many. What the hell
.

On the way to her appointment with Mantle, Katharine drove Marion and Quince back to the Dentons'. The girls decided they
didn't want to go out to dinner with the grown-ups, so they planned a fast food-videofest at home. Marion might have reconsidered
if Puck had been invited, but he wasn't, and Katharine was glad all around.

She wanted to say good-bye to Marion before her father and stepmother arrived, and Katharine hugged her, perhaps a little
too long for such a short acquaintance, but everyone thought it was so nice of her to be so sad that Marion was leaving. Katharine
didn't know when she would see Marion next — school was starting soon — and didn't know how to arrange herself to be of importance.
I am not her mother anymore
.

She overheard Quince and Marion making plans to visit each other sometime in October or November, so she kept telling herself
she would see Marion then. Perhaps she shouldn't have been so rash in firing Mr. Mulwray; it was painful to be around Marion,
and knowing about her through Mulwray, despite his threats, might have been a less wrenching way to get information.

Hank Denton walked Katharine out to her car, even though she really didn't want his company. He stopped her before she climbed
in and drove away.

“You don't remember me, do you?” he asked.

Katharine froze, her hand on the doorlatch.

“I didn't think so. It took me the longest time to place you too. I thought I knew you from somewhere when I first saw you
in my kitchen, but I wasn't sure from where or when.”

Katharine just shook her head.

“Over a year ago? Downtown at the Cabaret?” he prompted.

Katharine continued to shake her head.

“It's okay.” He then looked at her stricken face. “Oh no, it was nothing like that. Nothing happened. Though we were both
pretty drunk. We just talked. Maybe I talked you into a stupor, which is why you don't remember me.” His laughter sounded
canned, and it didn't suit him.

Katharine tried not to bolt.

“I had just lost my sister-in-law, and I was pretty upset.”

Katharine stared at him incredulously.

He didn't seem to notice. “I talked to you because you seemed so sympathetic. You seemed so interested. You asked so many
questions, and I talked so long. …” His voice trailed off, but then he seemed to collect himself. “I told you that evening
that I was a little in love with her, you see. She didn't even know, mind you, but I took her death hard — harder, perhaps,
than a mere brother-in-law should have, and I came out here to see if you ever did remember who I was and where you met me,
and ask you not to say anything. You know, to Emily. She might not understand why I was crying in my beer in a downtown bar.
Alone. She might not believe there was really nothing to it. That nothing ever came of it. She might not believe that.”

“It's okay,” Katharine barely croaked out. “I won't say anything. I believe you. Really.”

Hank nodded and let her go without another word.

Katharine pulled out into the street, barely missing the rear bumper of the car parked in front of her.

Thisby knew me? Thisby was interested in me? She didn't think I was just some boring middle-aged woman who died? Hank said
she was sympathetic; she asked so many questions
.

Thisby knew me
!

She wanted to wrap her arms around Thisby and hug her.

. . .

Dr. Mantle had barricaded himself behind his huge mahogany desk for
their meeting. He pointed to a chair and, when she was seated, pushed a business card across the expanse of desktop. Katharine leaned over and took it up —
HELEN HUDSON, PH.D., PSYCHOTHERAPY AND CONSULTING
.

Dr. Mantle sat up straight in his chair, playing leapfrog with his pipe and lighter on the desk blotter. He was good-looking,
in a stuffy British sort of way, his thin, blond hair carefully combed across his forehead. He looked like someone who had
prepared a speech and had been practicing it all morning — he was anxious to get it over with.

“I agreed to see you only because your mother called and asked me to. And only because I see most of her social peers and
their children.” He pointed to the card in her hand. “That is the name of a colleague who has agreed to see you from now on.
You can tell your mother that it was a mutual decision, that we decided it would be best for you to see someone who specializes
in your kind of trouble. Dr. Hudson
used
to specialize in serial killers, some of the smartest psychotics out there, so your little tricks will have no effect on
her. Try as you might.”

This sounds like a challenge
.

“I fulfilled my part of the bargain. I owe you nothing more.” He tapped the bowl of his pipe on the desk and waited. “You
have nothing to say to me?”

I'm sorry? No, I don't think so. Thisby would never want me to say that
. “I'll just leave then.” She stood up.

Dr. Mantle stood up too, rapping his thigh hard against the center desk drawer. Katharine could tell that he didn't trust
her to leave easily anymore than she had trusted Hooker to. His fingertips were on top of the desk, not resting lightly but
seeming to force the desk to its knees. He breathed deeply, showing signs of anxiety that he valiantly tried to mask. “I will
go to the police if you ever threaten me again. I have enough on you to make your life miserable too. I'll get you.”

Over my dead body
.

Katharine thought she could imagine what Thisby had on him. Sex with a client. Perhaps with an underage one. Prescribing drugs
she sold or shared or hoarded for herself.

The showdown reels forward in her mind.

She just appears in his office. Out of the blue. She's dumped him some time ago, but he's never gotten over her. She's his
drug, his addiction, his magnificent obsession. He'd do almost anything to get her back, and for some reason she needs him
now. She teases him, staying just out of reach, but still tantalizingly close. He aches to touch her skin. It calls to him.
His fingers twitch. He feels an erection beginning. He knows that will only give her more power, but he is standing and to
sit down would unbalance him even more. She grins when she notices the bulge in his pants. He smells her. He can hardly breathe.
She's so thin, he could crush her. But he knows better. She can be as impenetrable as Kevlar. He needs her cooperation. He
can hardly understand what she is saying. Something about a drug bust and an alibi. She needs him to say that she was here.
As a patient. That she was with him in a special follow-up session. All evening long. She needs him to be her alibi. He agrees.
He would agree to anything. She comes up to him and rubs herself against him. He tries to inhale her through his mouth. He
can't help it. It's been too long. He slamdances his erection against her and comes. She holds him as he spasms but lets go
as soon as he stops. She backs out of the office, the ultimatum hanging between them like a noose — or I will tell your wife,
the psychiatric board, all my mother's friends who see you too, how you raped me. How you fed me drugs and then raped me.
How you continued my treatment just to keep me accessible. I can damage you. As he looks down at the spreading stain of spent
semen on his tan slacks, he realizes just how damaged he is.