As Catalina searched for her cell phone in her red leather briefcase — purchased the day before at Holt’s for too much money — Mrs. Dubois’s woeful voice crackled through the intercom.
“Dr. Schmidt’s office,” she said, then cleared her throat and tried again, her words wet, unsure: “I mean doctor’s office. I’m sorry. May I help you?”
Catalina rolled her eyes at the apathetic lion but swallowed her annoyance and assumed a professional if slightly imperious tone: “It’s Dr. Thwaite. Can you let me in, please?” she said, her t’s sharp as stickpins. She gripped the brass handle, and after a moment of silence, a long, deep buzz unlocked the door.
The first thing Catalina encountered in the sun-drenched entry hall was a Venetian mirror that framed her reflection with an orgy of gilded cherubs and rosettes. She smiled and smoothed away a strand of her otherwise meticulously styled hair. She had seen a hairdresser that morning for a cut and color, even though he had balked at the seven a.m. request. Catalina was not fond of the word no, and she knew that, for enough money, the hairdresser would have come to her room at the Ritz-Carlton at four a.m. if she’d so desired. She’d been up, after all, planning every detail of the day ahead. The deep chestnut shade suited her better than the various blonds and reds she’d favored for so many years, and along with the classic Vidal Sassoon inverted bob, she looked dignified and slightly untouchable. She cut quite the figure in her black-and-white houndstooth suit — both the trousers and jacket made for her by a London tailor the week before — and the aquamarine silk scarf tied loosely around her neck. The four-inch undulating heels of her Louboutins made her nearly six-three.
“Worth every penny,” she said to her reflection, pulling her shoulders back and jutting her chin forward with the air of someone mildly offended. Catalina knew that three-quarters of success depended on looking the part, on making an impression that inspired confidence and a bit of fear. But Mrs. Dubois was already afraid.
As her aquamarine heels clicked against the red marble tiles, adrenaline surged though her body. It was similar to what she felt when she ran along the trails of Mount Royal, pretending she was being hunted before turning into the hunter. Now she stopped herself from running up the staircase to the second floor, not wanting to spoil the moment she’d so thoroughly rehearsed in her imagination. She ascended slowly, solemnly, holding onto the polished wooden banister, primed for her grand entrance into the new and enviable life which had begun when Dr. Schmidt’s ended.
As Catalina walked into the office, Mrs. Dubois was slouched at her small desk, staring at her computer screen, which was playing an electronic-greeting-card version of Bach’s “Chorale.” It was the background music for the online condolence book of Paperman’s, the funeral home that had taken care of Dr. Schmidt’s remains. Mrs. Dubois was so absorbed in scrolling through the entries left by grieving friends and clients that she did not notice her new employer’s arrival, even though she’d just buzzed her in. The guest book was likely the reason it had taken so long. Catalina had consulted the wretched site several times in preparation for meeting Dr. Schmidt’s clients — the ones who had not already moved on to a new therapist, and the ones who would be encouraged to do so. She had not gone to the funeral, nor had she left a comment. Perhaps that was what Mrs. Dubois was looking for.
Catalina grimaced inwardly as she studied the woman in her brown loafers and matching slacks, topped with a pale-blue sweater set that Mrs. Dubois had either bought in a thrift shop or saved from her youth — she wasn’t sure which was worse. Her blond hair had the brassy and dried-out quality of box dye, and was teased into a rounded helmet and sprayed into place. She wore glasses too large for her face, with rectangular gold frames and thick lenses divided by the horizontal line of bifocals. A small gold crucifix hung around her neck and was her only piece of jewelry other than a wristwatch and plain wedding band. Catalina knew Mrs. Dubois had been widowed several years before, and imagined that coming to work and keeping the also-widowed Dr. Schmidt and his clients’ lives in order had become the woman’s raison d’être. Perhaps Mrs. Dubois had hoped that becoming indispensible in the office would get her promoted to something more meaningful than secretary. But despite being only a few years younger than Dr. Schmidt, she was not young enough to satisfy his tastes, neither while Mrs. Schmidt was alive nor after she had died. Mrs. Dubois’s sartorial choices had obviously not helped her case.
The waiting room was a decent size, with its twelve-foot ceilings and bay windows common to the older town houses in the neighborhood. But unlike the hallway with its art deco sconces, mermaid chandelier, and parquet de Versailles floor smelling faintly of lemon polish, it had a musty odor and was as drab as Mrs. Dubois. The walls were yellowed and grayed with age, stained by cigarette smoke from the years the vile habit was still permitted indoors. Neurotics and schizophrenics surely filled the now absent ashtray on the coffee table with du Mauriers smoked down to the filter; the burns in its wood veneer betrayed its former location. In its place was a metal bowl filled with wrapped candies that looked shriveled and unappealing. An assortment of outdated magazines littered the rest of the table’s surface: Paris Match, Chatelaine, and a tattered issue of Police Extra with a picture of a smug cop on the cover, the headline blaring, “Payé par les Hells!” Catalina thought she could smell stale smoke trapped in the brown fabric of the couch, though perhaps it was carried in Mrs. Dubois’s bouffant.
When the door clicked shut, the old woman finally looked up, her eyes glazed as a sleepwalker’s. She gave Catalina a wan smile, then burst into tears. “I’m so sorry,” she blubbered, and hunched over to dig through her brown bag for a tissue, though there was a box for clients sitting at the front edge of her desk. “I know it’s been a week, but until you walked in...”
Catalina moved toward the crying woman, towering over her as she laid her briefcase on the desk. With her fingernails, she extracted a tissue from the box and handed it to Mrs. Dubois, who dabbed at the dribbles of mascara that were pooling in her wrinkles. “There, there,” she whispered, hoping her voice conveyed sympathy. She stopped short of patting the woman’s hand, which looked greasy and was mottled with brown spots. “It must be very hard to move from denial to acceptance so quickly. You’ve skipped a few very important steps.” Mrs. Dubois tried to smile, though she was still leaking blackened tears. “Thank you for coming in on such short notice, Joan.” She bent over the secretary’s desk and gazed at her so intensely that Mrs. Dubois was compelled to lean back in her chair. “Dr. Schmidt said you were as dependable as an atomic clock.”
Mrs. Dubois winced when she heard his name, though Catalina pretended not to notice. She was not the woman’s therapist, after all, and was eager to avoid the questions that were swimming behind the woman’s watery eyes: Why did Dr. Schmidt do it when his prostrate treatments were going so well? How could she, who saw him daily — more than anyone else — not have noticed his depression? And how did Catalina, who she had never heard of until after his death, come to be named a curator in his professional will? Dr. Weintraub was listed as his first choice, but he had retired to the Cayman Islands years ago and was unlikely to come back to Montreal to settle his old friend’s affairs. Catalina knew this because Forrest had mentioned that he hoped to follow Dr. Weintraub’s example, though he preferred Bermuda, which he visited every other year during Christmas break.