Goulding flips through an anemic file folder, reading and then rereading the three pages it contains. Paul watches him from across the desk. He’s sitting in the same chair that, minutes ago, was occupied by the woman with the flailing arms—the wife of the clinic’s latest victim—and he’s pretty certain he can smell traces of her perfume: something citrusy and cloying. It’s either that or the overpriced candle that’s flickering on the credenza behind Goulding’s desk. Paul clears his throat, but the doctor doesn’t look up from the folder, so he takes a moment to gaze around the office. He’s been in here a hundred times before, but he still can’t get over how industriously the place has been littered with utter crap. Expensive crap, but still crap. An antique sword uncovered from some Ottoman treasure trove extends across the top of a bookshelf. In the corner, by the office’s door, a small wooden bear hugs the base of a Black Forest hall stand. Propped on top of a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk in the center of the room sits a glass Tommaso Barbi chessboard with one of the queens missing. They were all gifts, Goulding told Paul the first time he was in here, but Paul’s never believed him. Because, really, who in his right mind would spend over two grand on a terra-cotta dog the size of a go-kart, only to give it to a shrink?
There’s art, too, but these selections Goulding takes credit for. The biggest piece hangs directly behind his desk: a Robert Gober drawing of two nude bodies in a languid, tangled embrace; his cock flaccid in a tuft of fine hair; a single nipple of hers sticking out like a speed bump from a shallow pothole. They’re all like this—images of the hypersexualized and risqué. A collection of early penis sketches from Warhol’s Sex Parts series, for example. The first time Paul saw the collection, his eyes shifting uncomfortably from torso to hip to ass, he asked the doctor if he had an interest in contemporary art, or possibly the human form. Goulding told him neither. “It’s a good way to get people to let their guard down,” he said. “Sex makes people squirm.”
Across the desk, the doctor closes the folder and presses his fingertips together.
“I’m going to transfer you off the Wendy Kingsland case,” he says.
Paul was expecting this; still, he feels the blood drain from his face.
“I … I feel like we’ve been making some real headway, though,” he says. “Today she stood in the can for a full twenty minutes.”
“Was that before or after you kissed her?”
Goulding winks, which makes Paul feel at once more at ease and infinitely more uncomfortable.
“I was proud of her.” He takes a half-assed stab at recovery. “I guess I got overly excited.”
“And thankful, too, I imagine!” Goulding smiles. His veneers dazzle. “After all that relationship advice she gave you.”
Paul’s jaw goes slack, and he stares at the doctor in disbelief. He tries to protest, but is only able to manage a deflated huh.
Goulding unclasps his hands and raises his palms. He shrugs. “It’s my clinic, Paul,” he says, as if ownership alone is a sufficient enough explanation for this level of Orwellian fuckery. “I know things.”
Out on the lawn, someone picks up Wendy’s garbage can and lugs it back toward the clinic’s storage shed. A member of the custodial crew crouches on her hands and knees to untangle fettuccini from flattened blades of grass.
Along the convex face of a copper paperweight, Paul sees his own distorted reflection. And then, looming in the background behind him, the bookshelf. The ottoman saber. Rows upon rows of Goulding’s books, their spines forming bands of white, red, and black. A hundred copies of the same analytic trilogy: Murdering Your Compulsion, Killing Your Obsession, Torturing Your Way to a Peaceful Mind.
“I guess my point, Paul, is: Do you want to help people? Do you still want to help people?”
“Of course.”
“Or, do you want to be helped?”
Paul looks down: this is a fine distinction.
“That’s what I thought,” Goulding says, before Paul can answer. “So, tomorrow you’ll be starting on a new case. A rather interesting one, I’d say. I’ll be supervising, at least until we’re … back on the same page again. But we could really use a man with your … physical capabilities.” He slides the folder that he’s been reading across the table. Paul opens it and sees a picture of the man he saw sitting in Goulding’s office earlier that afternoon.
Goulding adds, “And I want to make it perfectly clear: this isn’t a demotion. I in no way want you thinking about that. In fact, my worst fear with all this is that tonight you’ll find yourself sitting across the table from … Mark? Is that your partner’s name?… and you’ll be complaining about what an unfair guy I am.” Goulding chuckles. He buttons and then unbuttons his blazer. “So: no talk of demotion. Rather, let’s both look at this as a learning experience where you can really start to challenge yourself.”
The air-conditioning kicks on—a subtle industrial whirl—and Paul begins to read.
Rick Erwing. Terrified of driving. Is irrevocably convinced he’ll hit someone, or has hit someone, without knowing it. Each morning he spends nearly four hours circling his block in his blue ’98 Camry, looking for dead bodies. The pattern’s so predictable, so punctual and exact, that the neighbors have reported scheduling their mornings around it.
Paul’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He imagines his mother on the other end of the line, her lips pursing as she waits for him to answer, and he reaches down to silence it.
Alice
May 17
“Have you RSVPed yet?” she asks, and cradles the phone against her shoulder.
“I said I’m not going.”
“Goddamn it, Paul.”
“I already told you, Mark and I are doing something that weekend.”
“I refuse to acknowledge that glamping with a bunch of fucking homos in the Poconos is an excuse to miss Eloise’s wedding.”
“Actually, our plans have changed,” he says. “We’re going to Six Flags in New Jersey now.”
“The repulsiveness of your narcissism is actually impressive.”
“So is your willingness to grovel at Eloise’s feet.”
She wants to scream. Instead, she just comes out with it: “She asked me to be a bridesmaid.”
“What did you just say?”
“I got an e-mail from her this morning. She said that it would mean a lot to her. Invited me to the bachelorette party in London. The whole nine yards. Even told me I could bring a date.”
“You’re not actually thinking of doing it, are you?”
“I don’t know. I have to go.”
“What, got another date with a married dude?”
She never should have told Paul about Jonathan, she thinks. She knew it was a mistake as soon as she mentioned it to him, the way he pressed her for details like he was taking record of her sins.
“No, asshole.” She lowers her voice. “I have my group.”
“Oh.”
Paul’s quiet for a moment, and Alice relishes the silence and then the white noise that drowns it out. Office chairs squeaking, Xerox machines belching copies, her brother’s rhythmic exhalations, sounding at once right next to her and also twenty-seven hundred miles away.
But then he says: “He’s never going to leave her, you know.”
“You’re quoting lines from movies now.” Alice pinches the bridge of her nose. A migraine threatens. Tiny fists practice right hooks against her temples. “And besides, I don’t want him to leave her,” she lies. “It would ruin the whole point of what we’re doing in the first place.”
“Sure, pal.”
“Good-bye, Paul.”
“I swear to God, Alice, if you agree to be a bridesmaid in that fucking—”