I pulled into her driveway, leaned out my window. “I didn’t know women in Spring Hill could paint anything but their nails.”
“Don’t give up your day job for Second City, Ryder.”
She finished another perfect square inch, set the brush on the can, walked to the truck. She wore jeans and white running shoes and a long-sleeved khaki shirt with tails nearly reaching her knees. A blue bandana held her hair back. After her divorce she’d gotten into yoga and health-type foods, getting lithe and limber and losing twenty pounds.
“What brings you to my driveway, Ryder? You lost?”
I slow-tapped my thumbs on the wheel. “Listen Clair, uh, you said that if I ever needed someone to talk to…”
“Let me put away the paint, clean my hands-”
“I didn’t mean now. But thank you.”
She put her hand on my forearm, concern in her eyes. “If something’s bothering you, Ryder, please, let’s talk.”
I said, “I know you’re busy with society things, pathology things, a heavy social schedule. Tell me what’s a good time for you.”
“I’ve done all my society things for this month, Ryder-a fund-raiser for the symphony. Pathology I do at work, not home. As for…what was the third option?”
“Your social life, like dates and whatnot.”
“I’ve got two guys hitting on me, Ryder. One’s a banker who waxes rhapsodic about money market funds, ugh.”
“The other?”
She made a purring sound deep in her throat. “A hottie, I think is the term. A charming and intelligent man, self-made multimillionaire, one home in Mobile, one in Provence, a pied-a-terre in Manhattan. We were out together last night.”
“Oh.”
“I’d be real interested if he wasn’t eighty-four years old. What are you up to Saturday, Ryder?”
“My new routine: nothing.”
“Want to come here? Or my office at work? I can close the door, we can talk as much as you want.”
“How about my place?” I suggested. “We’ll sit on the deck, watch the dolphin-tour boats go back and forth.”
She turned and walked back to the mailbox, her hips graceful beneath the denim. She dipped the brush in paint, poised it over the mailbox.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Ryder. How about sevenish? That work for you?”
CHAPTER 31
I pulled away from Clair’s and aimed my truck for Dauphin Island when my phone rang: Harry. I pulled to the side of the road.
“You at home, Cars?”
“Still in town, Harry. I was just talking to Clair.”
“You’re at the morgue?”
“I stopped by her house for a few moments.”
A two-beat pause. “After you took off I nuked some leftover Chinese. Then I sat down and pulled out a stack of Rudolnick’s cases to scan while I ate, plow through another half inch. There was a magazine mixed in with them, a psychiatry thing. Some pages fell out.”
“Pages from the magazine?”
“Pages tucked inside the magazine.”
“Those are subscription forms, Harry.”
“Whatever pills you’re taking, Cars, they’re working. These ain’t subscription forms. They’re notes in the doc’s handwriting. Comments on a case, I think, but this is the kind of thing you know more about.”
“How about I stop by in the a.m., eight or so?”
“There’s something about the notes, Carson. I’d really like you to look at them now.”
I was sitting on Harry’s gallery in minutes. It was verging on dusk, but the gallery was well lit and the skeeter truck had been by minutes earlier. I had no idea of the chemical composition of the gray fog that poured from the mosquito-control truck, but like everyone who lived near coastal marshland, I didn’t care as long as it kept the bloodsuckers at bay.
“Here’s how it was when I grabbed it up, Cars.”
Harry handed me the spring issue of the Journal of American Psychiatry from two years back. It was Rudolnick’s personal issue, sent to his home address. Harry handed me the magazine by its spine, pages open toward the floor. Several pieces of white typing paper fell to my lap. Six pages, I counted, held at the upper-right edge with a paper clip.
There was only one small block of handwritten text on the front page:
This commences a special project. The undertaking is my own, “independent study,” I suppose. But I believe there are behaviors to be observed and catalogued.
This will be a record for reference.
“Get ready for an interesting trip,” Harry said.
I turned the page. Handwritten notes, sparse, some simply a line or two. There was no name, only “Subject.”
The pages were dated, the dates starting three and a half years back. I read the first entry.
Subject agitated. He paces behind me during my visit. There’s no doubt he wishes to get my attention (though I’m uncertain whether he himself has this realization). He complains of feeling “depressed” and “out of sorts.” He laughs, says, “Maybe it’s the surroundings.”
I lead him to a discussion of visualization techniques as foci for relaxation. I provide suggestions: waves, birds in flight, scudding clouds. He becomes agitated and demands I not treat him as I would “one of my fucked-up patients.”
I assure him that visualization techniques are commonplace, used daily in the home and workplace. His suspicion abates and he indicates interest. Like many, he selects clouds as his preferred setting, and we spend a half hour working with techniques to calm his mind.
I continued reading, wondering if Rudolnick had stuck the pages in the journal for later transcription and forgot where he had put them. The entries were sporadic, averaging six weeks between each. Most were three or four lines, much in the vein of an entry the second year:
Subject calm, a good day. He sits by the window, hands folded, and gazes into the trees. He watches Freddy playing.
The next entry, a few months later, was longer. And more foreboding:
I must be very circumspect, not a shrink, but more a-what? Friend? He has no friends, not in a usual sense. I must provide him with relaxation techniques without seeming to prescribe them. Or anything else I might suggest without seeming to make suggestions. If I appear to prescribe, he will believe I think he is sick. If he thinks I think he is sick, there could be dire consequences. Mirrors within mirrors. How did I get myself into this?
Two more mundane entries-the subject seems to enjoy watching “Freddy” playing outside-then, a month after, a bit of an insight into whoever is described:
He can be absolutely charming, humble. An interesting person to be around, normal, relaxed. Moments later he is demanding, dictatorial. His changes are mercurial and, I am beginning to think, difficult to control, though still contained. He sublimates his impulses exceptionally well, especially what I perceive as an anger toward women.
I doubt the sublimation can continue.
I read, fascinated, a brief entry occurring two months later.
Today he asked me, “Do people really taste like chicken, Rudolnick?” A minute later he was striding forcefully across the floor, appearing to make business decisions. Then he sat and read several of the magazines laying around, general-interest. Later, putting the magazines away, I discovered he had scratched the eyes blank in the photographs of several women, probably unconsciously.
There were several more observational visits, Rudolnick commenting on the patient’s(?) state of mind. The doctor’s observations seemed circumspect, veiled, almost as if he were watching from behind a glass window. The next long entry was the penultimate entry. I noticed the writing was looser, less controlled, as if written in a hurry or in a stressful situation.
When I arrive, he is waiting. His first question: Do I think women’s blood differs from men’s blood? I am becoming a magnet for him. He needs me, but does not realize it. I cannot fathom what will happen if he develops a dependency. He asks me to walk in the woods with him. I am reminded of photographs I have seen of leaders at Camp David, slow-walking down paths bordered with trees, heads bowed in discussion, hands folded behind backs. Except instead of discussing world events, all he discusses is sex and control and death. Not philosophy, but methodology.