On the bright side, I had plenty of time to arrange a rescue, but I was a little too hung up on the whole “eternity of torture” thing to celebrate. I leaned my head back against the wall of the game shop, feeling dizzy. Across the alley, a gray patchwork of paint marked an ongoing attempt to cover graffiti on the side of the strip club.
“Millie,” came Caryl’s calm voice on the phone. “If you have information that can help us resolve this situation, withholding it benefits no one.”
“It benefits me,” I snapped. “I can find Claybriar without helping the people who threw an unemployed cripple out on the street.”
“I do regret the way that was handled,” Caryl said.
“You mean, the way you didn’t handle it? The way you passed the buck to Song, someone I could actually hurt, because you couldn’t be bothered to look me in the eye?”
“The reasons for my absence were sound, but you are not in the proper frame of mind to understand or even hear them. And I am afraid I need to end this conversation.”
Fear of abandonment is one of the worst Borderline -triggers, and I was already as unraveled as I’d ever been.
“Why?” I demanded, smothering panic with anger. “So you can go suck up to Berenbaum? The guy who dropped me on his driveway like a trash bag? I’ve tried so hard for you, and yet when I make one mistake, you—”
“Which mistake do you mean?” Caryl’s words came out fast and inflectionless. “Do you mean causing thousands of dollars’ worth of property damage and immeasurable personal insult to a man who has poured millions into the Arcadia Project? Or do you mean physically assaulting your partner on your first day? Perhaps you are referring to the addictive painkillers in your suitcase, or your act of self-injury while a guest on Project property, or trespassing in a client’s hotel room, or posing as a licensed private investigator during an unauthorized phone call to a high-profile individual outside the Project’s jurisdiction? Do let me know which of those was your ‘one mistake,’ as it will make an interesting footnote to the report I must give my direct superior when she flies in next week from New Orleans to determine whether my lapse of judgment in hiring you indicates that I need to be replaced.”
Remorse is not something anyone feels easily. At heart, it comes from the recognition that you have done something beneath your worth. From a Borderline’s perspective, nothing is beneath her worth, because she has no worth. A person with no worth can’t hope for forgiveness, and so the only way to climb out of the purgatory of endless guilt is either to protest innocence or to drown out your own sins with the (invented if necessary) sins of your accuser.
I couldn’t do either of those things. I wasn’t innocent of the charges, Caryl had been doing her job, and there was no reason on earth that anyone should forgive me. I couldn’t even kill myself, because I had learned how horribly that kind of violence ricocheted into the lives of blameless strangers. There was nothing I could do that wouldn’t serve as further proof of my worthlessness.
Suddenly I wanted Monty. I wanted him like a child wants a red balloon now once its string has slipped out of her hand. I hung up the phone and slowly sat down in the alley.
Dissociation is one of the rarer Borderline symptoms, brought on by severe stress. It’s different from person to person, but it had happened to me at Professor Scott’s place, and it happened to me there again in the alley. I just left my body for a little while, the way you might leave a room when it’s too full of smoke to breathe.
People walked by; I could hear them. One even commented to his companion about me as they passed.
I heard a phone ring, and absently wondered why no one was answering. Eventually, the ringing stopped.
A nicely dressed woman held out some money and said, “Here, sweetheart, get something to eat.” I wasn’t sure who she was talking to.
The phone started ringing again. It occurred to me that it was probably my phone, and I should answer it. I just had no concept of how to make that happen, how to move my arm, how to form words of greeting.
It was the chill that eventually brought me back. As the shadows deepened I started to shiver, and the movement of my muscles gave me context for my consciousness. I was sitting in something cold. It took me a moment to realize I had wet myself.
“Christ, Roper,” I said aloud, words coming out drowsy and slurred. “New low.” I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to walk into the street with the kind of stains you usually find on a five-year-old. I didn’t know what to do.
Dazed, I checked my voice mail. Two messages: a man trying to set up an apartment showing, and Inaya asking for a call back. Caryl’s number didn’t appear on my incoming call list, a fact that cut sharply. Pain was good, though; pain was something.