"Being just like Mother."
"Mother, mother, mother," Clarence the Chemist chanted.
"Fucker, fucker, fucker," the Fireman chimed in.
"Did you fantasize about wearing women's clothes?" Pam asked.
Stephanie bristled. "If you mean, did I have a fetish about cross-dressing, don't be ridiculous. I was never a transvestite, those wretched faggots jerking off into their wives' underwear. I was born a woman. I will die a woman."
"Any day now," muttered the Fireman.
"Oh, Stephanie," cooed Clarence the Chemist. "Is it still two pounds sterling for you to suck off the guards in the WC, or has the price gone up?"
"It has," the Fireman said, furiously working his chewing gum. "Now Stephanie will pay five pounds."
Even Ken the Doll laughed at that one.
"Ignore them," Pamela told Stephanie.
But boys will be boys, even homicidal-maniac boys, and they were getting pretty worked up.
"Stephanie," the Fireman said, "do you know how to make a hormone?"
Stephanie looked straight ahead and said nothing.
"Don't pay her!" Clarence answered triumphantly.
These two were going to make everybody forget Abbott and Costello. When the clapping and foot-stomping stopped, Pamela looked Clarence in the eye. "Perhaps I should call Clive and order up a double dose of Thorazine. We could end group now, and everyone could return to the ward for a nice long nap."
That got their attention. The noise stopped, and Pamela continued. "Stephanie, your mother dressed you in girls' clothes, didn't she?"
"Ever since I could remember. Bows and frills. Just like Mother." Stephanie's voice had taken on an eerie little-girl quality.
"And Father, what did he say?"
"He was too potted to say anything, and after a while he wasn't there at all."
"And why did you kill the shop assistant?"
The question was jarring, as it was meant to be. Stephanie didn't bat a false eyelash. "The tart was throwing herself at a man."
"A man?"
"My man…the man I wanted."
"So you killed her?"
Stephanie shrugged. It was rational, I thought, remembering my earlier conversation with Pam. She killed the woman out of jealousy. The woman was after the man Stephanie wanted. And probably more important, the woman possessed the body parts Stephanie coveted, was lucky enough to be born with them.
"Kill, kill, kill," chanted Clarence the Chemist, quieter this time.
"Burn, burn, burn," answered the Fireman.
"Let's talk about the new boy," Stephanie said.
Suddenly they were looking at me.
"He's big," said the fireman.
"Handsome in a loutish way," said Stephanie.
"Do you kill them first or fuck them first?" Clarence asked.
Talk about leading questions. "Usually I make a joke and they just go away," I said.
Pam Maxson began passing out photocopies like a teacher to her class.
"Ooh, show-and-tell," Stephanie breathed.
Clarence drew a pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket and studied the papers. The Fireman industriously folded his copies, making three paper airplanes, licking the seams along the wings. Ken the Doll simply stared toward the screened windows.
"Clarence, you liked to leave little missives, didn't you?" Pam Maxson asked.
"Poetry. I wrote poetry. 'Ode to White Arsenic.' 'On Turning Blue.' 'Sighing with Cyanide.' You've read them all, Dr. Maxson." He examined the papers. "But this…this ranting about horses' eyes. This is sick."
"What about the others?"
Clarence read aloud. "'Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.' Not much to it unless old Lusky is a pedophile."
Clarence flipped to the next page. The Fireman sailed a paper airplane across the room, where it did a nosedive into a steel-screened window.
Stephanie said, "If he's cute, Mr. Lusk can catch me if he wants."
Again, Clarence read aloud. "'Weakness to be wroth with weakness, woman's pleasure, woman's pain…' A little dated, wouldn't you say, doctor?"
Pam Maxson turned to me and shrugged. I looked at Clarence. "Keep reading," I told him, wondering if Tennyson had ever been heard in these surroundings.
He continued silently, then said, "I can't relate to this, if that's your question." He screwed his face into a look of disapproval and read aloud again. "'Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions matched with mine, are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.'"
"What a pansy," the Fireman said.
Clarence said, "I never loved a woman and would surely not mourn over her loss."
The Fireman nodded in agreement.
"The poem was left at a murder scene, I said. "Does it mean anything to any of you?"
"A bit showy for my tastes," Clarence said. "Maybe something Ken would do. He likes the grand gesture. You dumped a body in front of Plymouth Church, didn't you, Ken?"
Ken wasn't talking, and the Fireman was licking the seams of another imaginary bomber.
"Strangled them," Clarence said. "Actually placed his hands on their filthy bodies. How unsanitary. Now, take cyanide…"
"Oh, yes, do!" shouted Stephanie.
Clarence ignored her. "The respiratory enzymes are poisoned, the body is paralyzed, and death occurs in seconds. And afterward, the body turns such a bright red. So delicious, like a big, plump cherry."
"What about it, Ken?" I asked. "Would you leave a note for your local constable?"
He glared at me. I didn't think he would say a word. Finally he turned back toward the window and softly said, "Actions speak louder than words."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Stephanie squirming in her chair. Pam Maxson acknowledged her with a wave of the hand.
"I hate to admit it, but the poem is right," Stephanie said, cocking her head to one side coquettishly. "I mean, it sounds strange for me to say it, since I'm a woman and all, but with the men I've known, the ones who've lusted after me, you have no idea, their passion. It's exhausting. And there are times when I have it, you know, the male sexuality. As you taught me, Dr. Maxson, all of us are bisexual to some degree, and I guess, me more than most. When I get it, that flow of hot male blood, it's different. So powerful and overwhelming, so intense, so lush. Lord knows, I love a man. I love to do nice things for him. But when I need a woman, it's difficult to describe, but it comes over me in waves, my passion inflamed a thousand-fold."
"What happens then?" I asked.
"I fuck her, of course. Good and proper."
I nodded and waited, and then it came.
"And hate her for it." Stephanie's voice was a whisper. "For making me the male beast. So who can blame me for killing her? I mean, really? Who can blame me?"
Pam Maxson apologized to me before leaving to join Charlie's lecture. The group had twenty minutes left, so I stuck around. We could play poker or swap tales of homicide. There didn't seem to be any poker players in the bunch.
Clarence was the most willing to talk; Stephanie stared at me and occasionally engaged in heavy breathing; the Fireman kept folding and unfolding his paper airplanes; and Ken couldn't care less.
Clarence leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, and whispered conspiratorially, "Dr. Maxson is teaching you all the mumbo jumbo, eh?"
Stephanie smiled. "Sweet bitch. Are you in her pants yet?"
"He's not her type," the Fireman said. "Only he doesn't know it yet."
I just looked at them.
"We're a cottage industry, you know," Clarence said. "We need each other, the psychiatrist and the crazed killer. Without us, how would they get their government grants or appear on the tube?"
"You like playing the role?" I asked.
He shrugged. "It's expected. Your FBI behavioral-science lads came up with the childhood profile, bed wetters who slice up animals and start fires-"