Just before the light changed to green, Naomi lowered her window about six inches, took a final deep drag on her cigarette, and tossed the still-lit butt onto the road between our cars.
I didn't get it.
People like Naomi, someone who I suspected wouldn't consider tossing a candy wrapper or a pop can onto the street, thought nothing of discarding cigarette butt after cigarette butt onto public sidewalks and thoroughfares.
Was there some statute I didn't know about that exempted cigarette butts from littering concerns? I suspected that what was more likely was that this was smokers' revenge for society's continuing anticigarette bias.
I also suspected that no matter how successful psychotherapy was, Naomi would still be littering her cigarette butts when we were done.
Later Monday evening I ran into Adrienne while I was taking the dogs outside for them to do their thing at the end of the day. I'd spotted the lights on in her dead husband Peter's old workshop, a barn he'd renovated into a woodworking facility that would leave weekend hobbyists drooling. When the dogs and I walked over we found Adrienne looking futilely for something that she'd put in the workshop in her version of storage, which as far as I'd been able to discern basically involved moving things to a location where she didn't trip over them on a daily basis. So far, nothing she'd moved into the old barn had been labeled, and as far as I could tell, nothing had been organized.
"Hey," she said as I stood in the open doorway. She spoke to me without looking up from the box in which she was rooting around. "You should keep Anvil away from the fields for the foreseeable future. The momma fox just had some new kits, everybody in the family looks hungry, and your poodle, such as he is, looks suspiciously like lunch."
"I know about the kits. They're cute. And Anvil's tough."
She laughed. "Right, and I'm gorgeous." She mumbled a profanity that I think was intended for the box she was trying to open, not for me, before she addressed me again. "I ever tell you that I have a patient who's going through a sex change?"
I raised my eyebrows.
"No, I'm not doing the operation, if that's what you're thinking. Somebody else is actually responsible for remodeling the plumbing."
"Your patient's a guy?" I asked to buy time. The whole topic of sexual transformation made me uncomfortable. Not philosophically, surgically.
"Yeah. You interested?"
"Interested? You mean-"
"Not in trying it, doofus. In helping. You know, professionally. These guys all need psychotherapy. It's part of the protocol. It's required."
"I don't know, Adrienne. How far along is the… how do you put it… the procedure? Is it like, well-"
"What?"
"Has he, um-"
"You want to know if the hose is still on the fire truck?"
I laughed.
She laughed, too, and returned to rooting in the boxes. She said, "Don't worry, I was just pimping you. I wouldn't send this guy to you. It would make you both crazier than you already are."
"Thanks. I appreciate it more than you know."
She threw a box out of her way and the sound of glass breaking filled the old barn. She ignored the carnage. "So who was the dog snooping around here the other day?"
I'd just recovered from one topic that made me anxious, so I wasn't well prepared for another. "Adrienne," I said. "You know, I disagree with what you said before-you are gorgeous. What, um, dog are you talking about?" Lying isn't one of my best things and I suspected that I'd just succeeded in alerting Adrienne that I was prevaricating.
" 'What, um, dog am I talking about?' While we were at dinner the other night, somebody came by with a dog and they walked all around your place, inside and out, and then they came in here."
"What?"
She stood up and faced me. Adrienne was petite. She was holding a folded blanket that she'd pulled from a cardboard box. Next to Emily's bulky mass, she looked like she was a jockey preparing to saddle up for a ride. "Look," she said. "My latest excuse for a nanny came by while we were at dinner and saw some woman and her dog checking out your place like the DEA thinks you're fronting for some drug lord. She said the woman and the dog came in here, too. This place is mine. That makes it my business. So tell me."
Her hands were on her hips.
Adrienne's history with nannies was not illustrious. I tried to distract her with a feint. "You're not happy with your nanny? I didn't know that."
"Let me put it this way: I'll give you ten thousand dollars for the unconditional rights to Viv."
"No way."
"That's what I figured. Now tell me about the drug-sniffing pooch."
I said, "I've been wondering, do you think I'm the right age to start having annual prostate exams?"
"Answer my question or I'll glove up right now and give you one I promise you'll never forget."
I pulled back a dusty canvas tarp and lifted myself up to sit on the edge of one of Peter's old workbenches. I knew that the fact that the shop was pretty much the way Peter had left it when he died had nothing to do with his wife's attempt to create a shrine. Adrienne wasn't exactly preserving Peter's shop in his memory; she just hadn't gotten around to moving any of his stuff, selling it, or giving it away. I suspected that with the exception of continued additions of boxes and assorted household junk from Adrienne, the barn wouldn't change much in the next decade.
I asked, "Did you know Leo Bigg?"
She lowered herself to the top of a box. The dogs immediately decided that she was prey and surrounded her. Emily sniffed her pockets for treats. Anvil tried to crawl onto her lap.
She asked, "Where on earth is that question coming from?"
"Just curious."
She stared at me. "You're often difficult, Alan, but you're not usually this constipated. If you don't answer at least one of my questions, I swear I'm going to kidnap your dogs."
I smiled. "If the threat of a sadistic prostate exam didn't sway me, you think the threat of moving my dogs across the lane and feeding them too many treats is going to unseal my lips?"
"Talk."
"Leo Bigg's story came up in a therapy session. I just thought that you might have known him."
"Leo's not dead, Alan. He's in prison. And, yes, I do know him. He was a good doc-is a good doc. Everything you'd want in an oncologist. But my suspicion is that that's not what you wanted to know. You want to know about his tragedies, don't you? You want to know whether he was the kind of guy who would do what he did?"
"Yes, I do."
"Everyone who knew him was shocked at what he did. Everyone. He found something most of us, thank God, never find-he found his breaking point. The weight of his heartbreak must have simply overwhelmed him. I can't explain what he did any other way."
I thought about Marin, the rape, and I nodded. "Did you know his family? His wife?"
"I probably met his wife at parties, but I don't remember her well. Those were the days before Jonas was born, and the Biggs already had kids. Plus the Biggs always floated a few social strata above Peter and me. They wouldn't hang with us. It would have been slumming for them."
"Lauren and I hang with you."
"Like I said, slumming."
Anvil had succeeded in curling up on Adrienne's lap. Emily was still nosing around in search of treats, nudging Adrienne in the flanks as though she were reluctant livestock. Adrienne relented and gave each of the dogs a biscuit from her pocket. She rarely went outside unprepared to indulge the dogs.