“Enough,” Ricky replied.
“Really?” the old analyst responded. “Time is elastic, isn’t it? Moments can last forever, or else evaporate instantly. Time is really a function of our own view of the world. Is that not something we learn in analysis?”
“Yes,” Ricky said. “That’s true.”
“And tonight, there are all sorts of questions about time, are there not? I mean, Ricky, here we are, alone in this house. But for how much longer? Knowing as I did that you were heading this way, do you not think I took the precaution of summoning help? How long before it arrives?”
“Long enough.”
“Ah, there is a wager I am not sure I would be so confident about.” The old analyst smiled again. “But perhaps we should make it slightly more complicated.”
“How so?”
“Suppose I were to tell you that somewhere here in this room is the information you seek. Could you find it in time? Before help arrives to rescue me?”
“I told you, I’m tired of playing games.”
“It is in plain sight. And you have already come closer to it than even I guessed you might. There. Enough clues.”
“I won’t play.”
“Well, I think you are wrong. I think you are going to have to play a bit longer Ricky, because this game has not concluded.” Dr. Lewis held both his hands up abruptly, and then said, “Ricky, I need to remove something from the top drawer of this desk. It is something which will certainly change the manner that this game is being played. Something that you will want to see. May I do that?”
Ricky aimed the pistol at Dr. Lewis’s forehead and nodded. “Go ahead.”
The doctor smiled again, a nasty, cold smile that had nothing to do with humor. An executioner’s grin. He removed an envelope from the drawer and placed it on the desktop in front of him.
“What’s that?”
“Perhaps, Ricky, it is the information you came here seeking. Names. Addresses. Identities.”
“Hand it to me.”
Dr. Lewis shrugged. “As you wish…,” he said. He thrust the envelope across the desktop and Ricky eagerly grabbed at it. It was sealed and Ricky took his eyes off the old physician for an instant while he inspected the letter. This was a mistake, which he realized as soon as he’d done it.
He lifted his eyes and saw that the old man now had a grin on his face and a small, snub-nosed.38 caliber revolver in his right hand.
“Not quite as big as yours, is it, Ricky?” The doctor laughed out loud. “But probably just as efficient. You see, you just made a mistake that none of the three people you are involved with would. And certainly not the man you know as Rumplestiltskin. He would never have taken his eyes off his target. Not for a second. No matter how well he knew the person he had targeted, he would never have trusted them enough to remove his eyes from them for even the briefest of times. Perhaps that should tell you how little chance you really have.” The two men were facing across the desktop, weapons aimed squarely at each other.
Ricky narrowed his gaze, feeling sweat gathering beneath his arms.
“This,” Dr. Lewis whispered, “is an analytic fantasy, is it not? In the system of transference, do we not want to kill, just as we want to kill our mother or our father or everyone who has come to symbolize all that is wrong with our lives? And the analyst, in return, does he not have a murderous passion that he would like to exploit at much the same time?”
Ricky didn’t reply at first. Finally, he muttered, “The child may have been a laboratory rat for evil, like you say. But he could have been turned around. You could have done it, but you did not, right? It was more intriguing to see what would happen if you left him adrift emotionally, wasn’t it? And it was far easier for you to blame all the evil in the world and ignore your own, wasn’t it?”
Dr. Lewis paled slightly.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Ricky continued, “that you were as much the psychopath as he was? You wanted a killer, and so you found one, because that was what you always wanted to be: a killer.”
The old man scowled. “You always were astute, Ricky. Think of what you could have made with your life had you been a bit more ambitious. A little more subtle.”
“Put the weapon down, doctor. You’re not going to shoot me,” Ricky said.
Dr. Lewis kept the revolver trained on Ricky’s face, but nodded. “I do not really have to, do I?” he said. “The man who killed you once will do it again. And this time he will not accept an obituary in the paper. I think he will actually need to see your death. Do you not?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it. And perhaps, once I find this great array of clues as to who he is that you say are here, perhaps I’ll just disappear again. I succeeded once, and I suspect I can evaporate a second time. Perhaps Rumplestiltskin will simply have to settle for what he achieved the first time we played. Doctor Starks is dead and gone. He won that round. But I will go on and become whatever I want. I can win by running. I win by hiding. By staying alive and anonymous. Isn’t that an oddity, doctor? We, who worked so hard to help ourselves and our patients confront the demons that pursue and torment them, can actually preserve ourselves by fleeing. We helped patients become something, but I can become nothing, and thus win. An irony, don’t you think?”
Dr. Lewis nodded his head.
“I anticipated your response,” he said slowly. “I imagined that you would see the answer that you have just provided me.”
“So,” Ricky said, “I repeat: Put your weapon down, and I will take my leave. Assuming the information I need is in this envelope.”
“In a way, it is,” the old man said. He was whispering, with a nasty smile. “But I have just a final question or two for you, Ricky… if you do not mind.”
Ricky nodded.
“I have told you of the man’s past. And told you far more than you yet understand. And what did I tell you of his relationship with me?”
“You spoke of a kind of odd loyalty and love. A psychopath’s love.”
“One killer’s love for another. Most intriguing, do you not think?”
“Fascinating,” Ricky said briskly. “And were I still a psychoanalyst, I would likely be intrigued and eager to investigate. But I am not. No longer.”
“Ah, but I think you are wrong.” Dr. Lewis shrugged his shoulders. “I think one cannot walk away from being a physician of the heart quite as easily as you seem to think it can be done.” The old man shook his head in a negative. He still had not relaxed his grip on the revolver, nor had it wavered from Ricky’s face. “I think our time is up for the evening, Ricky. One last session. The fifty-minute hour. Perhaps now your own analysis is nearly complete. But the real question I have for you to take away from this is this, Ricky: If he was so devoted to seeing you kill yourself after you failed his mother, what will he want to happen to you when he believes you have killed me?”