Welcome to my storm. Now let’s talk about yours.
It’s a good line, and she uses it often in her practice and on her radio show and now her new television show. Human emotions are internal weather systems, she explains to her patients, to her multitude of listeners. Every storm front is caused by something. Nothing comes from nothing. Talking about the weather is neither idle nor mundane.
“I see the look on your face,” she says from her leather chair in her cozy living-room setting. “You got the look again when the rain stopped.”
“I keep telling you I don’t have a look.”
“It’s interesting that you get the look when the rain stops. Not when it starts or is even at its worst, but when it suddenly stops as it did just now,” she says.
“I don’t have a look.”
“Just now the rain stopped and you got that look on your face,” Dr. Self says again. “It’s the same look you get when our time is up.”
“No it isn’t.”
“I promise it is.”
“I don’t pay three hundred dollars a damn hour to talk about storms. I don’t have a look.”
“Pete, I’m telling you what I see.”
“I don’t have a look,” Pete Marino replies from the reclining chair across from hers. “That’s crap. Why would I care about a storm? I’ve seen storms all my life. I didn’t grow up in a desert.”
She studies his face. He is rather handsome in a very rough, masculine way. She probes the dusky gray eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses. His balding head reminds her of a newborn’s bottom, pale and naked in the soft lamplight. His fleshy, rounded pate is a tender buttock waiting to be spanked.
“I think we’re having a trust issue,” she says.
He glowers at her from his chair.
“Why don’t you tell me why you care about rainstorms, about them ending, Pete. Because I believe you do. And you have the look even as we speak. I promise. You still have it,” she says to him.
He touches his face as if it is a mask, as if it is something that doesn’t belong to him.
“My face is normal. There’s nothing about it. Nothing.”
He taps his massive jaw. He taps his big forehead.
“If I had a look, I could tell. I don’t have a look.”
For the past few minutes they have driven in silence, heading back to the Hollywood Police Department parking lot, where Joe can retrieve his red Corvette and get out of her way for the rest of the day.
Then he suddenly says, “Did I tell you I got my scuba-diving license?”
“Good for you,” Scarpetta says, not pretending to care.
“I’m buying a condo in theCayman Islands. Well, not exactly. My girlfriend and I are buying it. She makes more money than me,” he says. “How about that. I’m a doctor and she’s a paralegal, not even a real lawyer, and she earns more than me.”
“I never assumed you chose forensic pathology for the money.”
“I didn’t go into it intending to be poor.”
“Then maybe you should consider doing something else, Joe.”
“Doesn’t look to me like you’re wanting for much.”
He turns toward her as they stop at a red light. She feels his stare.
“I guess it doesn’t hurt to have a niece who’s as rich as Bill Gates,” he adds. “And a boyfriend from some richNew Englandfamily.”
“What exactly is it that you’re implying?” she says, and she thinks of Marino.
She thinks of his hell scenes.
“That it’s easy to not care about money if you’ve got plenty. And maybe that you didn’t exactly earn it yourself.”
“Not that my finances are any of your business, but if you work as many years as I have and are smart, you can manage just fine.”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘manage.’ ”
She thinks of how impressive Joe was on paper. When he applied for the Academy’s fellowship, she thought he just might be the most promising fellow she had ever had. She doesn’t understand how she could have been so wrong.
“Nobody I’m watching in your camp is merely managing,” he says, his voice turning more snide. “Even Marino makes more than I do.”
“How would you know how much he makes?”
The Hollywood Police Department is just ahead on the left, a four-story precast building so close to a public golf course it’s not uncommon for misguided balls to fly over the fence and pelt police cars. She spots Joe’s precious red Corvette in a distant spot, tucked out of the path of anything that might so much as ding it.
“Everybody sort of knows what everybody makes,” Joe is saying. “It’s public knowledge.”
“It’s not.”
“You can’t keep secrets in a place so small.”
“The Academy’s not that small, and there should be plenty that’s confidential. Such as salaries.”
“I should be paid more. Marino’s not a damn doctor. He barely finished high school and he makes more than I do. All Lucy does is run around playing secret agent in her Ferraris, helicopters, jets, motorcycles. I want to know what the hell she does to have all that. Big shot, superwoman, what arrogance, what an attitude. It’s no wonder the students dislike her so much.”
Scarpetta stops behind his Corvette and turns to him, her face as serious as he has probably ever seen it.
“Joe?” she says. “You have one month left. Let’s get through it.”
In Dr. Self’sprofessional opinion, the cause of Marino’s biggest difficulties in life is the look he has on his face just now.
It is the subtlety of this negative facial expression, as opposed to the facial expression itself, that makes matters worse for him, as if he needs anything to make matters worse. If only he weren’t subtle about his secret fears, loathing, abandonments, sexual insecurities, bigotries and other repressed negativities. While she recognizes the tension in his mouth and eyes, other people probably don’t, not consciously. But unconsciously, they pick up on it and react.
Marino frequently is the victim of verbal abuse, rude behavior, dishonesty, rejection and betrayal. He gets into his share of fights. He claims to have killed several people during his demanding and dangerous career. Clearly, whoever is unwise enough to go after him gets quite a lot more than he bargains for, but Marino doesn’t look at it that way. People pick on him for no good reason, according to him. Some of the hostility is related to his job, according to him. Most of his problems stem from prejudice because he grew up poor inNew Jersey. He doesn’t understand why people have been shitty to him all of his life, he frequently says.
The last few weeks he has been much worse. This afternoon, he is worse yet.
“Let’s talk aboutNew Jerseyfor the few minutes we have left.” Dr. Self deliberately reminds him that the session is about to end. “Last week, you mentionedNew Jerseyseveral times. Why do you thinkNew Jerseystill matters?”
“If you grew up inNew Jersey, you’d know why,” he says, and the look on his face intensifies.
“That’s not an answer, Pete.”
“My father was a drunk. We was on the wrong side of the tracks. People still look at me like I’m fromNew Jerseyand that starts it.”
“Maybe it’s the look on your face, Pete, and not theirs,” she says again. “Maybe you’re the one who starts it.”
The answering machine clicks from the table next to Dr. Self’s leather chair and Marino gets the look on his face, very intense now. He doesn’t like it when a call interrupts their session, even if she doesn’t answer it. He doesn’t understand why she still relies on old technology instead of voicemail that is silent, that doesn’t click when someone leaves a message, that isn’t annoying and intrusive. He reminds her of this often. Discreetly, she glances at her watch, a large, gold watch with Roman numerals that she can see without her reading glasses.
In twelve minutes, the session will end. Pete Marino has difficulties with endings, with codas, with anything that is over, finished, spent or dead. It isn’t coincidental that Dr. Self schedules his appointments for late afternoons, preferably around five, when it is beginning to get dark or afternoon thundershowers stop. He is an intriguing case. She wouldn’t see him if he wasn’t. It is just a matter of time before she coaxes him to be a guest patient on her nationally broadcast radio show or maybe her new television show. He would be impressive in front of the camera, so much better than that unattractive and foolish Dr. Amos.