She poured me a glass of water.
“Thanks,” I said, accepting it. “I still can’t . . .”
“Can’t what?”
“I often feel thirsty,” I muttered, and drank before she could ask anything more.
“Pretty crazy, huh?” I said. She refilled the water for me.
“Being thirsty?”
“No, you know, smashing things at work. Launching expensive electronic equipment through glass walls in rooms where people are seated.”
“Do you think you’re crazy?”
“No — yes — I don’t know.”
“A, B, C, or all of the above?” she asked.
“I feel,” I said, my voice shaking, “out of control. It scares me.”
She waited a moment before asking, “Aside from this incident at work, what’s making you conclude that you’re out of control?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s that . . . I can’t concentrate. I don’t sleep much. Maybe that’s what causes the lack of concentration.”
“Did you have trouble concentrating before you went to the mountains?”
“Not really.”
“Trouble sleeping?”
I hesitated. “Sometimes. Not often.”
She waited.
“When I’m under a lot of stress, I sometimes have nightmares.” In a few words, I told her about my time of being held captive in a small, dark room in a cabin, of the fear and injuries I suffered there, of the occasional bouts with nightmares and claustrophobia I have suffered since. Only a few people know the details of that time. I don’t usually talk about it very freely, but I found myself thinking that maybe if I could interest her in that, she would not ask about more recent events.
She asked a few questions about my life in general. Again, I considered this safer ground, and was fairly relaxed, even when describing situations that had been traumatic at the time they occurred.
“You’ve been through a lot lately,” she said.
I shrugged. “Other people have been through worse.”
“But you survived. All of that, and what happened in May in the—”
“I don’t want to talk about the mountains,” I said quickly. “I’m tired of talking about what happened there.”
“Okay,” she said. “I won’t ask you to talk about those events just now.”
I felt a vast sense of relief.
“In the time since you’ve been back in Las Piernas, and except for Ben, have you spoken to any of the other people who were in the group?”
“I thought you weren’t going to ask—”
“Since you’ve been back,” she said calmly.
“They died,” I said, unable to keep the edginess out of my voice. “All except Ben and Bingle.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes. Unless you mean — the original group that hiked in?”
“That’s who I mean.”
“J.C. came by to see Ben several times. And so did Andy.”
“To see Ben,” she repeated. “Did you talk to them?”
I lifted a shoulder. “They were there to cheer him up.”
“So. . . ?”
“So I didn’t talk to them.”
After a moment, she said, “There were two others, weren’t there?”
I thought, then said, “There was a cop, Houghton. He was Thompson’s assistant, you might say. Frank told me he resigned on May nineteenth.”
“The day you returned from the mountains. When everyone learned what had happened there.”
“Yes. Maybe he felt bad about not being there. But it wasn’t his fault.”
“Maybe. Or he might have felt lucky,” she said. “Sometimes, in battle, for example, a soldier will see the man next to him die, and feel lucky that it wasn’t him. But even though that’s a natural reaction, later, he might feel bad about having felt it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Let’s see,” she said, “there was one more, person up there, right? The lawyer.”
“You mean, Phil Newly?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Disappeared for a while.”
“Why do you think he disappeared?” she asked.
“He said his sister was taking care of him while he recovered from his injuries. Parrish broke Phil’s foot.”
“So, there are four other people who went up into the mountains with you, but you haven’t talked to any of them since then?”
“Right.” I thought for a moment and said, “You think they might be having a hard time, too?”
“Do you?”
I hesitated only slightly before saying, “Yes.”
“How could you find out?”
“Talk to them.”
“Let’s make that your first homework assignment.”
“Homework!”
“Did you think therapy was going to be easy?” She laughed.
“No,” I answered honestly.
“Just those four people. A phone call, a visit — just contact them. Okay? Now, let’s talk about sleep and nutrition . . .”
39
MONDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 11
Las Piernas
Parrish was humming to himself as he worked. Being in a garage workshop was not quite as wonderful as having his own hangar to himself. The neighbors were a little closer, more caution was required.
But it was just so darned great to have his hands on some real tools again! He revved up the circular saw and listened to the high-pitched sound of the motor, smiled at how little resistance it met until it got to the bone.
He wondered if Ben Sheridan had been in the hands of so fine a surgeon — he doubted it was possible — and began to sing “Dem Bones.” There was a little burning smell as the saw did its work. He took a deep breath, and sang another chorus. When the saw zinged to a finish, he was at one of the “connected to” phrases. He stopped singing and smiled.
“Not anymore!” he said aloud, and had to put the saw down until he could stop laughing.
He methodically continued his work, but was disturbed to note that he was subject to a certain degree of distraction. He kept thinking about Ben Sheridan.
Ben Sheridan had tricked him!
No, no, such a thing wasn’t really possible. A trick implied cunning, and Sheridan had been acting in a ridiculously sentimental fashion when he charged into that meadow.
By pure luck, the man had escaped being killed by the bullet — little higher, Parrish thought, touching the bone he was working on — a shot in the femur, through the femoral artery and — glub, glub, glub — in no time at all, the man would have bled to death. Actually, he thought, if he had hit an artery, maybe it would have sprayed blood all over the place. The image was exciting to him, and he stayed with it for a moment, savoring it, pleasantly surprised by it.
He was constantly evolving, he knew, into a more perfect, higher being. He must embrace these changes in himself.
After all, Sheridan was on his mind almost as much as Irene. He had even thought of using the knife on him! His knife, which had never been used on male flesh.
Except for one of his early kills — the childhood bully Merrick had caused him to remember — he didn’t bother much with killing males. They were obstacles: accidental witnesses and the like. For men, he used guns. He shot them, got it over with. But maybe he was missing out on something.
He smiled, doing a little detail work around the knee joint of bone, thinking of the pain Ben Sheridan must have suffered. Did he scream, he wondered? Did he cry? Perhaps he would cause Ben Sheridan to weep, and lick the tears from his face.
He felt an impulse to even the man out, to take part of the other leg. Sheridan was so asymmetrical now. It was displeasing to him to see such a thing; it disturbed his sense of orderliness.
“I’m a sawbones, after all!” he said aloud, and snorted with laughter.
He made plans. She was a tricky one, this Irene. She was no longer working. Did his little engraved announcement — oh, that was a good one! — of his arrival in town frighten her away? Had she quit or had she been fired?
When he had called to see if she had received his other little message to her, he was transferred to her voice mail. But a recording said the voice mailbox was full, and the imbecile at the switchboard claimed she didn’t know when Ms. Kelly would be in. He considered and rejected killing the switchboard operator. He hardly had time to kill every ignorant nobody on this earth, now did he?