"I take it you're an accomplished cook?" she asked.
"Huh!" he snorted. "No, it's something I keep thinking I'd like to do but never quite get around to. I'm afraid I don't have some great culinary genius to astound you with. Sorry. But I'm pretty sure I can whip up something reasonably palatable and nutritious. What're you in the mood for?"
"Whatever's easy."
"Wine?"
"Wine, definitely."
What was easy was an eclectic meal of a good baguette, pate, mustard, some leftover jamb alaya, Greek olives, several cheeses, a bunch of grapes, and a bottle of burgundy. Paul set it all out on a big tray, but instead of bringing it over to the dining area, he carried it to a door at the far corner of the kitchen. Balancing the tray on one knee, he opened it to reveal a steep staircase, almost a ladder, that led up into darkness. When Cree gave him a questioning look, he said, "The other reason I bought this place. You go first, hold the upper door for me. This is a little tricky with a tray."
She went up. At the top of the stairs she found herself in a slope-ceilinged attic, its dimensions invisible in the dark, still stuffy from the heat of the day. A faint square of light drew her, and approaching it she entered a narrow roof dormer with a small door at its end. When she opened it she found herself outside in the city night. The dormer gave to a wooden deck built over the roof, which Paul had set up with a makeshift trellis, several planters full of growing things, and a teak table and chairs covered by a Cinzano umbrella. There were no stars visible, but the city's glow lit the hazy sky in every direction, and rows of bright windows defined several of the tall buildings downtown. Though it was Monday midnight, Cree could still hear the distant sound of a blues band from the direction of Bourbon Street. The varied peaks of nearby rooftops stretched away into darkness. The air had cooled considerably, but the roof still gave off some of the day's heat, making it perfectly comfortable.
Paul moved past her in the dim light to set the tray down. It clattered, the wine almost toppling, and as they both moved to catch it their bodies collided. Neither backed away from the contact. Without thinking about it Cree turned toward him, bringing her body against his, her arms going around him. One of his hands went to the bare skin at the back of her neck, the other slid into the incurve at her waist and found a fit there. Against her body she felt his breathing, a little quick from the climb up the stairs.
It happened so fast she was startled, but she just shut her eyes and felt the fascination of it. A man gave off heat, she realized, half surprised, as if she'd never known that fact. Her hands moved and found hard ridges of muscle where his back flared wide to the shoulders. The solidity of him seemed to give off gravity, too, and her body responded, falling toward him. They rocked side to side minutely as if they were dancing to each other's heartbeat. After a moment he turned his head slightly and put his lips to her ear. His warm breath tickled, and she thought he was going to whisper something, but instead he bit the rim of her ear -just with his lips, not a kiss at all but a way of tasting her or taking her a little into him.
In the dark, she felt vertigo. With the plummeting sensation came fear.
She pulled away, breathless. "Jeez. How much wine have I had?" she joked. "I'm dizzy already."
"None. But I know what you mean." He chuckled with her, but he'd heard her request for some time, a little distance. He let her go.
Cree took her arms back, though her hands were uncertain what to do.
They sat on either side of the table. Paul lit a couple of candle lanterns, poured the wine, and they clinked glasses. The wine was smooth and smoky. In the light, she could see the question in his eyes.
Why had she pulled away? A moment ago she was just free falling, and it was nice, it was… fascinating. This was what Joyce, Deirdre, anybody sane, would call a romantic situation. Soft rooftop air, the strange cityscape, good food, a handsome man, that undeniable charge of attraction and, yes, expectation. Two adults with that unspoken understanding that had been forged between them, by degrees, each time they met.
It should've been easy. It wasn't.
Cree found herself increasingly at war inside, wanting somehow to tell him, warn him, explain. Explain what? How unbalanced she was right now. How at odds this simple, sweet moment with nine years of habit. How long it had been.
"Weather's changing," Paul said, breaking what had turned into an awkward silence. "Supposed to get a couple of days of rain. This time of year, hard to believe, but it can be hot enough to boil crawfish one day, then turn truly nasty cold. I hope you brought sweaters and umbrellas with you."
"I'm from Seattle, remember?"
"Right. Of course. Where the biblical deluge never quite stopped." His smile flashed in the candlelight, and he tasted his wine. "You know, I've been thinking about what you do. On one level, I have this skepticism, I've told you that. But every time I think about what you've told me, I can see ways it makes sense."
"Such as?"
He sipped, looking over the rooftops. "In graduate school, I was fascinated with traditional healing disciplines, even wrote a paper on shamanism from a psychoanalytic perspective. I pointed out that all over the world, throughout history, healing traditions are remarkably consistent. I saw it firsthand in Bali, but you'll find the same basic ideas in Siberia or Central America or Congo. People with bad health or troubled circumstances go to the village shaman. To fix the problem, the shaman enters a special state of mind that allows him to make a journey to the underworld, where he intercedes on the patient's behalf with ghosts of the sufferer's ancestors or maybe spirits of nature. The affliction is always assumed to have a psychological as well as a physical element, and so does the cure. The shaman finds that some part of the afflicted person's soul is held hostage because he's offended some spirit by doing wrong in his life – there's some unfinished business. Say a son marries someone his mother disapproves of. Later, after the mother dies, he gets sick or his crops fail repeatedly. The shaman identifies his guilty feelings as the cause of his misfortunes, figures out an appropriate way for him to atone to her ghost. And it often works! Because the shaman allows the victim to have closure with the unfinished business. Same principle as psychoanalysis, just a different vocabulary!" He looked over the rim of his glass at Cree as if a little wary of her reaction. "But why am I telling you this? You're the modern-day shaman."
"I've observed the parallels. You're very insightful."
"So then I was thinking, how does your methodology compare with mine? And I realized yours has several advantages. Me, I see only the patient – I listen to his story, I probe, I ask questions. I accept the story, regardless of its literal truth, and help the patient formulate a constructive coping process. Conventional psychoanalysis is based on creating useful, therapeutic fictions, and I've never been comfortable with that… separation from objective reality. The issue of recovered memory you brought up is a perfect case in point. The patient may come to believe he was ritually abused by satanic parents, but if it's literally, objectively not factual, it creates a damaging schism between the patient and the rest of the world. But you, you do research on the whole picture, so you have much more information at your disposal. You not only talk to the patient, but you also talk to family and friends, you look at patients' home environment and family history, you observe how they live, you see their relationships firsthand. Which allows you to be more… objective. More reality based." He looked surprised at himself and then added with a grin, "I can't believe I said that! If one accepts that there are such things as ghosts to begin with, I mean."
"It's really a more intuitive process, Paul. I get pretty far out there, by your standards. I know ghosts to be a literal reality. And some of my processes – I doubt you'd appreciate them all in the same light."