Breakthrough
I WROTE WORDS ON A BLACKBOARD WHILE THEY POURED COFFEE (THERE was herbal tea for Stick) and grumbled about the fact that I had removed all the chairs from the cabin. Outside, at eight-thirty it was still cool, although the sun shimmered on Green Mountain pond and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Jack had his eyes on the east end, the fishing and camping side.
Earlier, during our seven-thirty A.M. phone session, Halley told me, “Well, you win, you bastard. Last night, I gave Jack every opportunity to invite me to his bed. You’ve put him back into the big bosom of his ‘adorable little family,’” she finished with a poor imitation of Amy Truman’s Southern accent.
“He’s small fish,” I said. “You’re going for the Great White Shark — Edgar and the company he’ll give you to run.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No. Remember, I’m the doctor.”
“I don’t use sex to get ahead.”
“That’s true,” I said. It was true. Her love affairs weren’t practical; at least, not to her. “But it isn’t sex I’m talking about. That’s merely the way Edgar will get to know you. Maybe he won’t even bother to go to bed with you.”
“I still say you’re crazy,” she said. “No one can run Minotaur better than my father.”
I couldn’t tell, frankly, if that meant she had betrayed my lie to her father. My guess was no, since she pretended, in order to hear more encouragement, to believe my proposal wouldn’t work.
On the blackboard, I wrote the words: NERD. THE GLASSHOLES. GEEK HEAVEN. PRINCE OF DARKNESS. SOFTHEAD. BEER BRAINS. LEECH. By now, the mumbling and giggling about how to get comfortable on the cabin floor stopped. When I turned to face them, I had their full attention. “You’ve all heard the cliché that life is really just high school. Well, for a lot of people life often is high school, but it isn’t meant to be. Adults are supposed to understand that differences in taste, appearance, behavior and abilities are the natural order. Adults are supposed to have learned, in high school, that when human beings are successful, they used these differences to their advantage. Teenagers have a good excuse for dividing into cliques and making up mean nicknames for the cliques they don’t belong to. Adolescents are discovering who they are. Their hold on identity is tenuous. To know who they are, often first they have to know who they are not. But a mature person, to put it in business terms — a winner — is someone who has confidence in his or her identity and who isn’t afraid of differences. I’m not talking about racism or religious tolerance or other sorts of general tribal identity. I’m talking about confidence within the tribe. You have formed a unit to forage for food and shelter and, for better or worse, the personnel of Minotaur are your only resource. The words up here are a sample of the high school nicknames used secretly within your tribe. Their existence proves you are not a mature group. They prove you are losers.”
Tim Gallent, whose long stringy blond hair was washed and combed for the first time since I had met him, laughed. A nervous whinny, actually, that continued to escalate in both pitch and volume. His eyes were wide and they moved desperately back and forth from Andy to me. Andy was seated on the floor beside him. They made quite a contrast: Andy’s bowl of black hair and pale face; Tim’s mane of blond hair and florid skin; Andy’s long skinny legs folded neatly under him; Tim’s wide thighs pushing his stumpy legs away from a big belly. Andy mumbled something to Tim, who immediately covered his mouth with his hand. Muffled giggles continued, though subsiding. As for the others, most of them watched me like penitent children. The exceptions were: Jack, whose green eyes regarded me with interest and no alarm; Halley, head tilted, smirking at me as if we were sharing a joke; and Stick, who sipped his herbal tea without any affect — he might have been watching a dull television show.
“If people want to laugh, or yell, or throw up, pee on the floor, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m not a member of your tribe. You don’t owe me loyalty or respect. Go ahead and laugh, Tim.”
He removed the hand from his mouth and lowered his head. “Sorry.”
“What for? I know that the chief of your tribe is here and that he can cast you out into the wilderness. You know that he has asked me to lead you in these sessions. So you might think in dealing with me you are dealing with him. But that’s not true. I have an understanding with the Prince of Darkness. Isn’t that right?” I asked Stick.
He had put himself at the rear. Tim covered his mouth again. Martha Klein and Jonathan Stivik turned to look at their boss. Halley lifted her eyes to the ceiling, her smirk broadening to a smile. The rest stared ahead, but too stiffly, obviously wanting to look.
Stick put his mug of tea on the floor and cleared his throat. “I guess you’re talking to me, Rafe. That’s good. I’ve always wanted to be a prince.”
There was polite laughter. I continued, “The Prince of Darkness knows I’m going to make you all say things that are taboo in the normal rules of the tribe. If he doesn’t like the result — well, let me ask you, Prince, who will you blame?”
“I’m going to blame you, Witch Doctor,” Stick answered and this time there was loud, genuine laughter.
I smiled. “Very good.” I turned and wrote WITCH DOCTOR on the blackboard while I continued, “This morning we’re all going to use our high school names. But first,” I faced them again, “since these names aren’t of your own choosing, the Witch Doctor will tell you who you are.” I pointed at Jack. “Stand up, Glasshole.”
Timmy laughed again, this time normally.
Jack stood up. He was on the other side of the room and a little behind so he had to step forward and turn to catch Tim’s eye. He asked, “Are you enjoying yourself in Geek Heaven?”
Andy bent over, laughed and smacked the floor. “Geek Heaven,” he repeated. “It’s us!” he said and laughed.
I had them get up one by one and accept a pejorative. A couple of alternates were cheerfully suggested that I agreed to, but I resisted outright invention, insisting on those they had actually used before, with one exception. Stick and Halley were the last two on the floor. “Get up, Prince of Darkness,” I told Copley. That left Halley alone and unnamed. Her smirk was long gone. She looked small, young, and surrounded.
“Well,” I asked the group, “what do we call her?”
It became obvious that she didn’t have a nickname they all used. That didn’t surprise me, since she presented a different persona to each one. “Glassholette,” Tim offered and laughed, but the others didn’t join him or clap to show approval.
I peered at her. “I don’t think so.” I scanned the group. Jack seemed to want to talk. “Yes?”
“Queen of Darkness,” he said solemnly, green eyes on me alone. He swallowed afterwards. I knew that he had been brave and I winked at him.
“Is that how the tribe thinks of Halley?” I asked. I noted that, although this ordeal would bring most people to the verge of tears, Halley’s black eyes were calm, eerily abstracted, and her body, in a half-lotus, remained still and at ease. A defense certainly, but to call Halley’s emotional shield a “defense” is to forget that the armor of a tank is there to protect its gun, not the passenger. She wasn’t wounded. I didn’t imagine for a moment she could be by this group. I looked at Martha, who had shown little apprehension about the game. “What do you call her, Leech?”
Martha was a big-boned fleshy woman, overweight by modern standards, although realistically she couldn’t keep her broad shoulders and wide hips free of fat unless she were to starve. She also had the misfortune of a pug nose, too small for the scale of her broad forehead and wide mouth. “Miss Halley.”
“Miss Halley?” I nodded sagely. “You mean you’re her slave?”