“And what did he have to say?”
“Not one word. He locked the door and pushed me to the floor,” she says. “It’s now a ritual, at the end of every class. There’s four other students in that studio class, and I can’t even begin to tell you how incredible the tension is between us during that hour.” It’s silent then, and I picture Sam, in his chair, waiting for her to speak. “Are you appalled, Doctor?”
“Appalled?”
“Yes. An impressionable twenty-four-year-old woman, sleeping with her older, married professor. Certainly breaks a lot of rules.”
“What do you think about that aspect of your relationship?”
“I think it’s an incredible turn-on,” she says. “In fact, nothing turns me on more than crossing a boundary with a man.”
“That’s something I would like to explore further,” Sam says. “But unfortunately, we’re nearly out of time.” I look at the clock: 2:44. Her appointment must have started at two. I take the notebook I’d hidden in one of Agatha Lawrence’s boxes and add her name to the list—“The French Girl”—as Sam shifts in his chair below me. “I’m curious how today felt for you,” he says. “You said in your message you’ve never gone to therapy before. I like to check in and see—”
“It felt great,” she says. “You’re worth every cent.”
“Would you like to make another appointment for later this week?”
“You want me to come twice a week?”
“It’s what I suggest for all new patients, at least in the beginning,” Sam says. I stop writing. No, he doesn’t. “Therapy is most useful to those who commit to it, Charlie.” Charlie, I jot down in the notebook.
“Can I think about it?” she asks.
“Of course.”
They stand, and I hear Sam’s office door open. I wait for the outside door to slam shut and her footsteps to pass by the window before sliding the notebook into the box and easing toward the broken window for a peek. She’s wearing a hat with a fur rim and a long wool coat. I can’t make out her features as she opens the door and gets into the front seat of the green Mini Cooper. I step away from the window and replace the happy-face rug. Pulling my robe more tightly around me, I steal quietly out of the room, back upstairs, uneasy.
He needs to watch out for that one.
Chapter 11
Sam runs hard and fast up the hill, rain-soaked, his lungs burning.
Keep going, he tells himself. Five more minutes to the top. It’s so quiet, the only sounds are his labored breathing and the soles of his new top-of-the-line running shoes slapping against the cold, wet asphalt, bringing back the memory of the first time he ran this road, the night his dad left. Sam left his mother at the dining room table, the barely touched coconut cake on the table between them. He bolted out of the house, down their cul-de-sac of shitty two-bedroom houses, up into the hills. Albemarle Road. Even the name sounded majestic, and he kept coming back, punishing his body, imagining what it would be like to own one of these big houses, skylights under a canopy of pines, six wooded acres. Rich people lived here. Intact families with two cars and a father who wasn’t fucking the girl on page twenty-four of the Talbots catalog.
Annie knows something’s up. Of course she does, she’s not an idiot. He’s been acting weird since he went to the bank four days ago. Called her to cancel their date, made up a story about a patient in crisis, said he needed to make a few phone calls. He then sat in his car for four hours in the high school parking lot, trying to come up with a plan.
Sam hears a car approaching and moves to the side of the road, toward the edge of the shallow ditch. He keeps going, his thighs burning, sprinting the last hundred feet to the top of the hill. He drops down to the ground, panting, his phone heavy in the front pocket of his running jacket.
Do it, Sam. Do what you came up here to do. Call him.
Sam unzips the pocket and pulls out his phone and the slip of paper where he wrote his father’s phone number, which he’d spent forty-five minutes digging through old cell phone bills to find. It’s going to be fine. He’ll tell his father what happened at the bank, and his father will fix everything. He takes a breath, dials.
“Yeah, hello!” Ted Statler chirps on the first ring.
“Hi Dad.”
The line goes silent for a moment. “That you, Sammy?”
“It’s me, all right,” he says through the lump in his throat. “Unless you have another kid I don’t know about.”
His father laughs. “Well, how about that. How you doing, son?”
“Good. I’m sorry we haven’t spoken—” There’s commotion on the other end.
“Guess where I am,” Ted says.
“I have no idea.”
“Peter Angelos’s house. You know who that is?”
Sam laughs. “Of course I know who that is. It’s the owner of the Baltimore Orioles.”
“Right, Sammy! Nice work.” Teddy whistles. “He’s got a fountain. Anyway, how’s things, son? How’s New York treating you?”